MICHAEL JOSEPH
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First published 2012
Copyright © A. L. Berridge, 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-196925-2
Maps
Prologue
Part I: The Alma
1. 14 September 1854, 2.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.
2. 14 September 1854, 4.00 p.m. to midnight
3. 18 September 1854
4. 19 September 1854, 3.00 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.
5. 19 September 1854, 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.
6. 20 September 1854, 3.45 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.
7. 20 September 1854, 3.30 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.
8. 20 September 1854, 5.00 p.m. to 10.00 p.m.
Part II: Balaklava
9. 28 September to 15 October 1854
10. 15 to 16 October 1854
11. 16 October 1854, 5.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.
12. 17 October 1854, 5.30 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.
13. 22 October 1854
14. 23 to 24 October 1854
15. 25 October 1854, 4.30 a.m. to 10.55 a.m.
16. 25 October 1854, 11.00 a.m. to noon
Part III: Inkerman
17. 25 October 1854, noon to 10.00 p.m.
18. 26 October 1854, 6.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.
19. 26 October 1854, 4.00 p.m. to 11.00 p.m.
20. 28 October to 5 November 1854
21. 5 November 1854, 2.00 a.m. to 6.00 a.m.
22. 5 November 1854, 6.00 a.m. to 8.10 a.m.
23. 5 November 1854, 8.10 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.
24. 7 November 1854
Epilogue
Historical Note
Acknowledgements
By the same author
Honour and the Sword
In the Name of the King
Meerut – June 1853
Everything looked the same. Heat had dried the nullah to a muddy trickle, but that was usual before the rains came, and Ensign Harry Standish crossed the bridge to the British town with the comforting sense of coming home. Under his breath he was humming ‘Widdicombe Fair’.
The Mall was its usual afternoon quiet. The doctor’s wife was reading in the shade of her veranda, and when he called ‘Hullo, Mrs Carron, I’m home!’ her hand flew to her mouth and the book dropped with a smack to the stones. She seemed too startled to return his greeting, and he guessed with amusement she hadn’t recognized him. That was fair enough. The boy who left India nine months ago was very different from the eighteen-year-old officer walking home in the triumph of his first-ever battle. He was looking forward to telling his father.
He was still humming as he passed jauntily on to their own bungalow. The white gate looked the same as always, but it bumped open unevenly at his push and he saw with surprise the base was clogged with weeds. There were more growing along the path, and as his footsteps crunched on the gravel the silence blasted back at him like a ricochet from a shot. Where the devil were the servants? Even the path ahead was dirty, its white stones speckled with a spray of earth, but as he neared the house he realized the mud was moving, the random specks resolving themselves into a glinting black trail that reached all the way to the side door of his father’s study.
Ants.
His footsteps quickened, slapping urgently up the path. He dropped his pack, knocked on the door and said, ‘Sir?’ but the ants were bolder, swarming over his boots in their haste to scurry under the crack of the door. They weren’t soldier ants, they wouldn’t attack a living man, but he kicked out in revulsion and the door shuddered ajar at the blow. He threw it open wide.
The stench hit him like a wall of heat, sickly, rotten, and tinged with the sourness of whisky. The ant trail trickled past his foot, solidified to an advancing phalanx, and drew his eyes up to the black, heaving mound spread over the floor in the cruciform shape of a man. But the head was monstrous, a gorgon’s, surrounded by dark tentacles of ants as they clustered and puddled over what he understood suddenly were sprays of blood or worse. Realization forced his gaze back to the body, following the eloquent curve of the outflung arm to the open hand and the metal object lying silently beside it. There were ants on the gun too.
His throat clenched, and he reeled back through the door, spitting and retching, only vaguely aware of footsteps approaching on the gravel. A voice called ‘Master Harry-sahib!’ and old Ramesh Kumar came hurrying towards him with a basket, but his smile of welcome congealed into anxiety at the sight of the ants and open door. ‘The colonel-sahib …’
‘In there,’ he said, turning away to retch again. ‘In there.’ He scrubbed his sleeve violently over his mouth and saw with curious detachment the trembling of his arm.
He heard the hoarse cry, then the slow deliberate tread as the khansamar backed out of the study to stand beside him. Thank God for Ramesh, he thought dully. The other servants might have disappeared, but the old butler would never desert them. ‘For God’s sake, Ramesh, what’s happened here?’
‘My fault, sahib,’ said the old man. ‘Never does the colonel-sahib send me out of town to market, never in twenty years, I should have known he would do this.’ His knees crunched to the ground, and Standish saw with shock that he was weeping. ‘Oh, what will we do, sahib, what will we do?’
Ramesh had three times his years and five times his wisdom, but Standish felt the burden of ‘sahib’ crash round his shoulders like a yoke. There was no senior officer here, he had no father, there was only himself to be what the old man needed. He swallowed down his own shock and said, ‘No one’s fault, Ramesh. Now get me water, we’re going to clear this before anyone sees.’
‘Han, sahib,’ said the khansamar at once, leaping up at the sound of authority. ‘Water.’ He hurried round the house for the well and Standish forced himself to go back in the room. He wouldn’t look at the thing on the floor; that wasn’t his father, wasn’t the man he’d shaken hands with every night of his childhood, wasn’t the respected Colonel Standish who would sometimes forget himself and play bears under the dining table with his boy. He looked at the room instead and only now noticed how much was missing. The bookcase was nearly empty, the candlesticks gone, nothing on the stained tablecloth but a half-empty whisky bottle and a tumbler clouded with finger marks. He lifted them off, and whipped away the cloth as Ramesh staggered back in with a bucket. ‘In the middle, Ramesh, clear me a hand-hold in the middle.’ His father’s waist and strong chest, the middle.
Ramesh threw. The water made a red streak in the black, the British army coat of which father and son had been so proud. Standish flung the tablecloth over the terrible head, bent to force his arms under the body, and lifted it with surprising ease. No need to look, no need to flinch, a man couldn’t be revolted by the body of his own father. He carried it outside with his head held high in a travesty of pride, and lowered it into the horse trough by the front gate. Little pricks of pain peppered his wrists where the ants bit, but he thrust the corpse under and watched the drowning insects float to the surface in a thick black scum. A paleness glimmered beneath, and just for a second he saw the horror of blood and bone and brain and the eaten-out cavities that had been his father’s eyes.
He swung away in shock, furiously brushing the clinging insects from his arms and coat. There were steps at the gate, Dr and Mrs Carron, but Ramesh was running past to meet them, and Standish leaned against the almond tree as he fought to control his nausea. The murmur of voices gave him a moment’s space, and he allowed himself to look at the indignity of his father’s legs hanging over the edge of the trough. Why had he never seen how thin and frail they were, never until now? A terrible emptiness began to stir in his chest, and with it the first yearning of grief.
He crushed it down ruthlessly to make his mind work. The money was gone, obviously, but it would take more than that to drive a devoted soldier to blow his brains out. What had it done to him, this army he’d given his whole life to? What had it done? He stared at the ground for answers, but saw only faint grey splashes of water already evaporating in the heat.
A woman’s voice rose over the others, Mrs Carron saying, ‘Oh, Henry, Henry, that poor boy, whatever will he do?’ He watched the dark edges of a damp patch magically shrinking, until there was nothing left but a single ant lying crippled and helpless on the burning stones.
‘Hurrah for the Crimea! We are off tomorrow … Take Sebastopol in a week or so, and then into winter quarters.’
Cornet E. R. Fisher, 4th Dragoon Guards, letter of 4 September 1854
The bands were playing as they landed in the Crimea. Drums rolled, cymbals crashed, and boats bobbed to the rhythm of Camptown Races as they hauled their rafts of soldiers to the shore. The beach was already teeming with them, sunlight blazing in the ranks of scarlet and gold and rifle-green, flashing off brass-fronted shakos and glistening incongruously in the damp black bearskins of the Guards. Private Charlie Oliver of the 13th Light Dragoons watched wistfully from the rail of the steamship Jason and wondered why he felt slightly sick.
The other fellows seemed quite happy. The deck buzzed with the speculation of men impatient for their own turn, and Oliver knew he should feel the same. He’d been afraid the Russians would resist the landing, but there’d been no cannon fire, no musketry, no sign of the enemy anywhere, and the British troops panting purposefully up the beach were greeted only by hopeful Crim-Tartar locals, rickety arabas piled high with trade-goods, and strings of depressed-looking mules. British officers were already haggling with the traders just as easily as in the bazaars of Varna, and far across the water Oliver heard the distinctive clonking of camel bells.
‘Looks all right to me,’ said Fisk, licking up biscuit crumbs from the palm of his hand. ‘Don’t know why they want to call it Calamity Bay.’
‘It’s “Kalamita”, you ass,’ said the knowledgeable voice of ‘Telegraph’ Jordan. ‘Kalamita. It’s foreign.’
It didn’t really look it now. Specks of red were already appearing above the cliffs as British picquets guarded the road inland, and those square patches of colour were British regimental flags marking British territory. It didn’t sound it either, and Oliver’s spirits lifted as another raft landed to the familiar skirling of Highland pipes. The tension of the morning was dissolving into celebration, men shouting and laughing as they waded ashore, and even the dour Highlanders humoured the sailors’ mockery of their kilts by prancing up the beach with hands entwined like girls. It was going to be all right. It was going to be all right after all.
Oars splashed below, one of the Jason’s own gigs pulling back towards them, and the rail beside him shook with the thump of bodies as men rushed to the side for news. ‘Hulloa, Jasons!’ called Jordan, clinging on to his shako as the crowd behind shoved him halfway over the rail. ‘What’s up? Are we off?’ Others shouted ‘Any sign of the Russkies?’, ‘Any women?’, and Fisk squashed his great bulk next to Oliver to bawl, ‘Never mind that, is there any food?’
The coxswain looked at his gig’s crew with an air of puzzlement. ‘You hear anything, lads? Like it might be the twitter of little birds?’
Hoots of derision exploded round the deck. Jordan cried, ‘Have a heart, chum, are we off or not?’
The coxswain grinned up at him. ‘Couldn’t say, matey. It’s coming up for a blow.’
Jordan grinned knowingly. ‘What about the Russkies?’
‘What Russkies?’ said the coxswain, and spat. ‘Never a sniff of them; you’ll be at Sebastopol in a week.’ He rummaged in a sack at his feet then stood precariously and bent back his arm for a throw. ‘Here, have a peach.’
The pink fruit came sailing up towards their outstretched hands. Oliver watched it rise, brought his arm smart to the curve and caught it with the familiar smack of a ball in his palm. For a second he was home again, fielding in the deep on a summer cricket field, then Fisk snatched the peach, said, ‘Thanks, pal,’ and sunk his teeth into the soft flesh.
The group broke up in laughter. The gig was moving on, but no one called after it, no one needed more; a few words and a piece of fruit were enough to make all of it real. Oliver stared at the distant shore, the low-lying cliffs, the green blur of grassy hillocks behind, and knew the intolerable waiting was over at last. The heat and stench and sickness of the camps of Varna were safely behind them, and somewhere in front lay the place they’d set out to conquer all those long months ago.
Sebastopol! The politicians had demanded it, the newspapers screamed for it, even the crowds had shouted it when they embarked at Portsmouth. Sebastopol was the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, the prize they must take to avenge the massacred Turkish fleet and show the Russian Bear Britannia still ruled the waves. Britannia wasn’t going it alone, of course, there were French ships landing further along the bay and some Turks about somewhere, but Sebastopol could never withstand such a huge and glorious force as this. And Oliver was part of it! He looked down at his own uniform, at the brand-new good-conduct stripe on his dark blue sleeve, and felt the last of his uncertainty swept away on a wave of excitement.
He looked round for someone to share it with, but Ronnie still didn’t seem to be about. He hadn’t been at parade either, or in the line for their three days’ rations, and Oliver began to wonder if he’d been put on some kind of fatigue. It would be beastly to make him miss all the excitement, but he was afraid it was just the sort of thing Troop Sergeant-Major Jarvis would do.
At least the TSM wasn’t on deck either, and in his absence the mood was turning almost to carnival. Jordan was conducting a chorus of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’, Fisk gyrating his vast gut in a grotesque belly dance, and Bolton was gazing yearningly at the distant green grass as if at a vision of heaven. Prosser and Moody were actually smiling, and their beautifully polished boots tapped in unison to the music of the band. Even Big Joe Sullivan seemed to have forgotten his own misery for a while, and was scouring the horizon as if eager to find someone to fight. Everyone was excited, and who wouldn’t be at a time like this?
Someone wasn’t. As Oliver gazed happily round the deck he saw one man standing apart, a tall, dark and faintly disreputable figure looking down at the sea with a curiously taut expression on his face. He wore a corporal’s chevrons on his sleeve, but his hair blew untidily under his shako, his jaw was shadowed by the casual stubble of a man who shaved only when he felt like it, and he was straddling the ship’s rail as if he didn’t care whether he fell or not. He’d catch it hot if Jarvis saw him, but then he probably wouldn’t care about that either. Harry Ryder never seemed to care about anything.
But something was bothering him now, and his tense immobility tweaked Oliver with a sense of unease. Ryder didn’t have friends, he was cocky and rude and Jarvis couldn’t stand him, but he did tend to know things other people didn’t, and no one understood why. Oliver looked furtively over the side to see what was worrying him, but saw only an ordinary empty flatboat tossing and heaving in the swell.
He looked away as Ryder’s head turned, but the corporal had seen him and at once relaxed into his usual insolent grin. He swung his leg jauntily back over the rail and said, ‘What’s the matter, Polly? Don’t you want to go to war?’
Oliver flinched at the hateful nickname. ‘Of course. It’s what we came for, isn’t it?’
Ryder had very dark eyes for an Englishman, slanted like an Indian’s and gleaming with amusement. ‘Is it, Poll? I’ve often wondered.’
Oliver looked uncertainly at him. It was a moral war, all the fellows said so, they were standing up to Russia to stop them bullying poor little Turkey. He hesitated, but the troop had already spotted Ryder and came flocking round like noisy pigeons, shouting, ‘When are we off, Corp?’ ‘When are we off?’
Ryder shrugged. ‘The sea’s coming up. With luck it’ll be tomorrow.’
‘With luck?’ said Fisk incredulously. ‘The Frogs are nearly all off, there’ll be nothing left in the villages once those thieving buggers have been through.’
Ryder smiled faintly. ‘There’ll be nothing left for anyone once you’ve been through.’
The troop shouted with laughter. Fisk sucked peach from his fingers and grinned.
Moody didn’t laugh. ‘Don’t listen to him, Fisk. The sar’nt-major says we’re rostered next, and that’s good enough for me.’ Prosser immediately said ‘That’s right’ and looked aggressively at Ryder.
Ryder’s eyes glinted. ‘First rule of toad-eating, Moody. It works better if the man’s there to hear you.’
Moody’s face turned brick-red, but the laughter was muted and Oliver didn’t dare join in. Moody would tell Jarvis.
Prosser certainly would, and his pock-marked face was stiff with truculence. ‘Are you saying the sar’nt-major’s wrong? Eh? That what you’re saying?’
Ryder looked impassively at him. ‘The sar’nt-major’s right, we’re rostered next, but it won’t be this afternoon. Only a fool would land cavalry in this swell.’
A bang like a musket shot on the deck behind, then immediately another, the hatches being thrown open to the hold. Their own farrier-sergeant was hurrying up with the vet, and a second later came a screech of tackle as sailors set the hoist to winch the horses from below.
Ryder’s face changed. He said something under his breath that sounded dreadfully like ‘Christ’, then wiped a hand over his mouth and strode across to the farrier-sergeant. ‘Hullo, Sam, what the devil are we playing at?’
Oliver licked his lips. The blasphemy was bad, the Christian name almost worse, and he guessed Ryder really hadn’t been joking.
‘Is he saying it’s dangerous?’ said Bolton anxiously. ‘For the horses? Bobbin’s weak enough already, a whole week in a stall not big enough to lie down.’
‘Oh, stow it, Tommy,’ said Fisk irritably. ‘There’s no danger, we wouldn’t be going otherwise.’
Bolton creased his brow. ‘But Ryder says …’
‘What does Ryder know?’ said Fisk, and snorted. ‘Giving himself airs like a bloody general. He’s a nobody, same as us.’
Oliver glanced across to the hatch. The farrier-sergeant was red faced and waving his arms in exaggerated helplessness, but Ryder stood silent with his arms folded and his head down, giving only an occasional expressive nod.
‘Cardigan,’ said Jordan, nodding his head wisely. ‘Bet you a tanner. This’ll be Cardigan wanting to get the Light Brigade off before Lucan’s even thought of it. Colley says he’ll do anything to show up Lucan in front of Lord Raglan.’
Oliver looked away. Colley was Lord Lucan’s servant, and the main source of Jordan’s information, but it couldn’t be more than silly gossip. All the fellows joked about their commanders, but he knew they wouldn’t really order a disembarkation if it wasn’t safe.
‘First section “G” Troop!’ called a squeaky voice by the hatch, and Cornet Hoare came bustling importantly up to the rail. ‘Saddles and packs, back here in ten minutes. All aboard for the Crimea!’
Hoare’s voice had hardly broken yet, but he represented authority and at once the men dashed whooping for the hold. Oliver glanced doubtfully back at Ryder, but the corporal only gestured with ironic courtesy and said, ‘Well, get a move on, Polly. You wouldn’t want to lose that nice new stripe.’ He was utterly insufferable.
But he was also right, and Oliver pulled himself together to join the race down the ladder. The hold seemed more oppressive than ever after the sunlight on deck, warm and fetid with the stench of sweat and diarrhoea. It was dark, too, illuminated only by the swaying lamps that creaked on ropes overhead, but he picked his way through it with the familiarity of a long voyage and found the unwanted spot in the middle that had been his own bed. His blanket was rolled and ready, his haversack needed only to be slung on his back, but it was the valise that mattered, and he knelt on the damp boards to pack it with care.
These were his personal things. The groundsheet Colonel Lygon had given every man in the regiment when they left for the Crimea. The letters from his sister, precious, marked ‘Vicky’, and numbered in order. The Adams revolver in its case, good as any officer’s, given to him by the squire in his father’s old parish. The Christ’s Hospital Bible, inscribed with the charge never to forget the benefits he had received from the charity school that had taken in the orphaned boy and given him the education of a gentleman. Oliver stroked the cheap leather with love and stowed the book with reverence. He had never forgotten, and one day he was going to make the School proud.
‘Oliver!’ called a woman’s voice. He spun round in shock, but an oil lamp by the bulkhead showed him only the fair hair of young Mrs Jarvis kneeling by a blanketed figure on the boards. It would take more than regulations to keep out Sally Jarvis when one of her troop needed nursing.
‘Oliver!’ she said again, waving impatiently. ‘Come over, he wants to see you.’
He knew then, knew it before he saw the tortured face of the man in the blanket. Ronnie Stokes. His only real friend in this army, the one man who understood things and would pray with him in the evenings when everything looked dark. They’d prayed yesterday, just last night. Had he been suffering all the time and never said?
‘Dysentery,’ he told himself, as he clambered over the legs of reclining ‘B’ Troop to reach the bulkhead. It didn’t have to be – the other thing, the disease they’d left behind in the cavalry camp at Devno. He reached the dark wooden wall, but Ronnie’s hand came up and his voice said ‘Not too close, old man. Not … too close.’
Oliver looked down at the boards at his feet. The lamp made a yellow puddle of the floor, and in it he saw the spreading stain of fluid seeping from under Ronnie’s body. It was almost colourless, the cracks of the planks clearly visible through it, and the faintly fishy odour told him the rest. Cholera.
He looked up in horror and met the sad eyes of Mrs Jarvis. She said, ‘There are orderlies coming, but he wanted to see you before he went.’
‘Yes,’ said Ronnie, snatching at the word. ‘Some things I want you to have.’ He moved his eyes towards a shadowy cylinder by his blanket. ‘By my valise.’
Oliver’s heart thumped. ‘You’ll want them with you.’
‘No,’ said Ronnie simply, then closed his eyes in the convulsion of another cramp.
It was unbearable. He said, ‘You’ll get better, old fellow, lots of chaps do,’ but the faint blue tinge of the final stages was already in Ronnie’s face. By evening he’d be just another canvas-wrapped corpse floating in the fleet’s wake.
‘There’s no one else,’ said Ronnie. ‘No auction. Just …’ Again he nodded at the valise.
Oliver understood. Ronnie had no family, no one they’d have to raise money for by selling his possessions. He said, ‘Just to look after, then. Till you join us in Sebastopol.’
There were three items laid out for him: a green bottle of French brandy, a wooden box of cheroots, and the familiar pack of playing cards. It was the cards that hurt most, and just the feel of the box in his hand tightened Oliver’s throat. Those evenings of two-handed whist were all that had kept him going during those first dreadful months in the army when he’d been so terrified of Jarvis he could hardly even sleep. He was still scared of Jarvis – everyone was, except Ryder – but Ronnie had helped him master the drill, and in the evenings there’d been those games when they could talk and laugh and it was almost like being back at school.
‘Lot of sins for you there, Charlie,’ said Ronnie, with a twisted little smile. ‘If I only had a dirty book you’d have the full set.’
Ronnie with a dirty book! Oliver tried to smile back, but tears were blurring his eyes and his cheekbones hurt. Ronnie was his own age, just seventeen. He’d endured the training, all the horrors of Varna, only to die now when the adventure was just starting and everything about to be worthwhile.
A voice called ‘Come on, chum!’ and he turned to see Jordan hanging from the ladder to look for him in the gloom. ‘Your mare’s on the boat and bloody Jarvis is on the prowl.’
Terror shot through him, and his whole body twitched with the urge to leap up and run. He called back ‘All right!’ and looked doubtfully at Ronnie.
‘You go,’ said Ronnie, still smiling. ‘I’ll see you at Sebastopol.’
Mrs Jarvis smiled too. ‘You’d better. If “bloody Jarvis” is on the prowl …’
He grinned sheepishly, tucked his new possessions under his arm, and gave a last look down at his friend. Mrs Jarvis was brushing the sweaty hair from his eyes and whispering ‘There, my love,’ in a soft Cornish voice that made him want to cry. He reached out to grasp Ronnie’s dry hand in his own, said, ‘God bless you, old fellow,’ and turned hurriedly away before the tears could fall.
‘Good luck, old man,’ said Ronnie, and ‘Good luck,’ called Mrs Jarvis. ‘B’ Troop said it too as he passed them, ‘Good, luck, Trooper. Good luck!’ He crammed Ronnie’s things into his own valise, snatched up his saddle and bolted for the ladder, but the voices calling ‘Good luck! Good luck!’ followed him all the way into the sunlight of the world above.
The flatboat heaved as the last horse was swung over the side, and Ryder had to stamp hard to keep his footing. If it was like this in the lee of the Jason, how the hell would it be in the crowded mass of boats and rafts that passed for the open sea? One slip on this wet deck could break a horse’s legs, and they were short of remounts as it was.
The horses they did have weren’t in the best of condition. That was Bolton’s bloody Bobbin coming down now, a temperamental little mare who’d never been broken properly, but even she lay inert in the sling, legs stuck out stiffly for whatever ground she’d be plonked on next. The sailors patted her soothingly as they removed the harness and led her over to Bolton’s eager hands, and Ryder took some comfort in their steady, sure-footed movements. At least they had trained men with them on the trip.
It was more than he could say of their officers. Poor Cornet Hoare was skidding hopelessly over the waterlogged boards and had to grab the coxswain’s arm to stop himself falling. ‘I say!’ he said breathlessly. ‘It wasn’t like this at Varna!’ The boy was reliable enough to follow steady orders, but the only other officer boarding with their section was Captain Marsh himself, a man of such opaque simplicity he was generally known as ‘Bog’. The farrier-sergeant had already appealed to him about the conditions, but Marsh’s answer was that they’d been ordered ashore, they would go ashore, and the men would just have to make certain there were no accidents.
The men. Ryder studied them as they stood at the heads of their frightened beasts, and felt his confidence sink. From a distance they’d look magnificent, the dark blue jackets accentuating their slim figures and double white overall stripe exaggerating their height, but the yellow and scarlet belts were loose on shrunken waists and the faces beneath the oilskin-covered shakos were a dull grey. They were worn down by months of ill treatment, poor rations, and dysentery, and God knew if they could be counted on in an emergency.
Like this one. The right side was the weakness, and he sighed at the sight of that prize prig Polly Oliver right at the front. Blond and beardless, bright-eyed and oozing pride in his new good-conduct stripe, he’d be as much use as a fly-swat. No, what was needed at the end of that line was bulk, something more like the blubber-lipped ox next to him, who still had bits of peach in his beard even on parade. ‘Fisk!’ he said. ‘Change places with Oliver. Now. Second rank too, Prosser outside, Bolton inside.’
The rear rank should have been safe with Sullivan on the end, but that was before the last day in Varna. Big Joe Sullivan, solid as stone, but he’d got drunk over cards with Bloomer of the 7th and been given fifty lashes for supposedly striking that bastard Jarvis. His back would still be in ribbons, but the real damage was inside, visible only in the hunched body and lowered head that refused to look anyone in the face. Ryder stepped close and muttered, ‘You’re not fit, Joe, get back on board.’
‘I’m fit, Corp,’ said Sullivan, but without looking up. ‘I’m fit.’
Ryder understood. ‘At least take the pack off. We can pile it with the valises.’
Sullivan mumbled something incoherent, but he did lower his broad shoulder to slide the heavy haversack to the ground.
But a second thump echoed it, a man descending from the ladder behind. The tension in the ranks told Ryder at once who it was, and even the sailors stopped chattering to look. He listened to the heavy footsteps prowling slowly to the front, and turned with resignation to face Troop Sergeant-Major Jarvis.
Jarvis wasn’t tall, but he held himself so rigid that few of his troopers would have believed it. The massive shoulders and thrust-out chest were daunting enough, but even his face seemed swollen by the excess flesh that formed folds in the whiskered jowls and pouches under the hard little eyes. Everyone on the flatboat watched as he rounded the ranks, stuck his crop under his arm, strained higher on his toes, and stopped in front of Ryder.
Ryder said, ‘Sar’nt-major,’ and stood to attention. The deck was sopping, the whole platform heaving, but Jarvis would put him on a charge if he didn’t do it perfectly. Jarvis would put him on a charge for breathing if he could.
The sergeant-major’s eyes crawled over him, searching for that elusive excuse to make him jump. His gaze lingered on the dark shadow of the jaw, visibly burning with resentment at the new regulations that allowed such a sight on his parade, then slid away to the ranks of the men behind. At once he stiffened, and pointed his crop at Fisk. ‘These men are out of order! Put them back at once.’
Ryder was careful to keep his voice low, nothing to make the NCO feel threatened in front of the troop. ‘Yes, Sar’nt-major, I thought it better to strengthen the outside.’
Jarvis must have heard him, but he wasn’t passing up a chance to make the corporal he’d never wanted look a fool. ‘Speak up, Ryder, don’t be shy. Tell us your opinion.’
Prosser and Moody were already grinning. Ryder lifted his chin and said it again, louder. ‘I thought it better to strengthen the outside.’
Jarvis smiled broadly. ‘You’re a corporal, you’re not required to think!’ Moody sniggered obediently and Prosser added an extra-loud guffaw.
Ryder ignored them. ‘Look at the swell, Sar’nt-major; no one else is landing cavalry. The farrier-sergeant’s worried, and we need to take precautions.’
The laughter faded and died. In the sudden quiet the midshipman could be heard addressing the sailors. ‘And watch that baggage! It’s going to be rough, see, it needs to be dead centre to trim the boat.’
Every head turned to Jarvis. The sergeant-major reddened dangerously and swung round on Ryder. ‘You think you know better than our officers, do you? Well, do you?’
A three-year-old knew better than their officers. ‘No, Sar’nt-major.’
‘No,’ said Jarvis, nodding emphatically. ‘I gave you an order, Corporal. Now execute it. At the double!’
At the double. The boat was swaying beneath them, but men and horses scrambled frantically to get back in their original places. The movement immediately exposed the rank behind, and this time Jarvis didn’t bother with words. He pointed the crop at Sullivan’s pack, looked on impassively as the man stoically reworked it onto his mutilated back, then strutted complacently on down the line. Ryder watched him with loathing, but could only lead his own horse to the right flank and stand in silence like the rest.
It was too late for anything else. The midshipman was clearly anxious to get under way before the conditions worsened, and waited only for Captain Marsh to take his place before giving the signal to cast off. The tow-boats hauled, the platform heaved, men staggered and righted themselves, and horses whinnied in alarm. Even Marsh said ‘By Jove, bit frisky, ain’t it?’ but they were already committed, every stroke pulling them further and further from the Jason’s side. The walls of the anchored fleet receded around them as if they were emerging from a town into open country, and under his feet Ryder felt the full roll of the sea.
He called down the line, ‘Arms through bridoon reins, boys, keep those horses steady,’ but the boys were even shakier, the neat lines rocking and buckling with every heave of the swell. Even the sailors grimaced as they looked over their shoulders at the water-traffic, and he knew that sailors, like soldiers, had rarely learned to swim.
‘Bit crowded, ain’t it?’ said Marsh, as they skirted a raft of Guards only to find a huge artillery flatboat heaving up beside them. ‘Here, Middy, why are we packed so close?’
The midshipman kept his eyes on the artillery raft. ‘Not us, sir, it’s the Frogs. We had a landing plan and a buoy to mark it, but the French have sneaked out and moved the buoy.’
‘By Jove,’ said Marsh, struggling to digest this treachery on the part of their allies. ‘Given themselves more room, eh?’
The midshipman shrugged. ‘So they say. God knows where the Turks will land, they’ll be lucky if we’ve left them a puddle.’
‘Never mind the Johnnies,’ called the irrepressible Jordan. ‘Where’s Russ? Looks like we called a war and nobody came.’
Laughter rippled round the boat, but Ryder was watching the approaching shore and didn’t feel inclined to join in.
‘Nobody?’ he said. ‘Look again, Jordan. Look at the top of the hill.’
Everyone turned, and the raft was suddenly silent but for the gentle washing of surf. The beach ahead was teeming with red uniforms, but there it was again, a little white flash on the slopes above, a grey blur, then another flash. There were a handful of riders on the horizon, men waiting placidly on horseback, but above their seated figures protruded long-hafted lances with blades that glinted in the sun. They weren’t in the uniform of an official Host, they wore grey fur hats rather than shakos, but there was no mistaking them all the same. Cossacks. Not pictures in The Times or Punch, the real thing, just sitting there watching them. Russian Cossacks.
A low murmur began to buzz about the boat. ‘Not many, are there?’ said Hoare cheerfully. ‘They must be awfully windy to see what’s below.’
They didn’t look it. Five men in rifle range of thousands, but they trotted along as calmly as gentlemen on Rotten Row, and Ryder saw uneasily that one in a green frock-coat was stopping to write in what looked like a book. What made them so damned confident? Was there a whole army of them just behind those green, inviting hills?
A shout wrenched him back to the flatboat. The coxswain was yelling and waving as the artillery float lurched towards them, a gun rolling loose in its moorings. The raft heaved as the boats tried to turn, horses neighed, men stumbled and cursed, then a violent jolt, a sudden drop, the smashing of wood, and the howitzer came crunching through their side.
The coxswain hauled on a tow-rope, sailors wrestled with the great 24-pounder that was worth all their lives put together, but the platform was tilting like a see-saw, men and horses tumbling towards the rising waves. The troop’s right flank was breaking, Sullivan gone and his horse with him, both hurled outboard without a cry. Oliver screamed, ‘Take her, take her!’ and threw his mare’s reins at Fisk even as he slid over the wood towards the foaming sea. Ryder grabbed for him, but the wet sleeve scorched through his hand, Oliver gone, then a blow smashed him sideways as the mare fell after. Fisk had missed her, but at least he understood at last; he was turning with bent knees to hold back the rest.
Ryder swung left. Jordan and Moody had control, that end steady, but Bolton’s mare was screaming and rearing on the right, scattering men in fear of her hooves. Jarvis bawled ‘Stand steady there!’ but the mare was already through them and crashing over the flatboat’s shattered side. Hoare’s horse was next, and the cornet following, sixteen years old and trying to halt a stallion of seventy stones weight. Ryder flung him backwards, and slid his own haversack to the deck. His shako, sword-belt and cap-box were already off, but there was no time for the boots. Men and horses were struggling and splashing in the water, trapped between two boats pinned together by the anchor of a howitzer barrel. Ryder thrust Wanderer’s reins into Fisk’s hands, made for the broken side, and plunged into the sea.
A wave broke at once over his head, stinging his eyes and washing wood-splinters into his gasping mouth. He fought the weight of sodden clothing to dodge clear of Bolton’s thrashing mare, seized the side to grab a quick gulp of air, and looked round for the men. One was floundering and shouting ahead of the flatboat, but sailors in the gig were already stretching out a boat-hook to bring him in. Oliver was all right too, his damp blond head moving cleanly through the water as he swam back to the raft. Sullivan was the priority, splashing and gurgling with every stroke, weighed down by the bloody haversack there hadn’t been time to remove.
Ryder struck out towards him. The trooper was struggling and panicking, but Ryder hauled his arms over a bit of floating wreckage and kept him pinned there until his breathing steadied. He looked back to the flatboat, but horses were still struggling in the gap between the tangled vessels, and would have to be cleared before he could bring Sullivan through. ‘Stay there,’ he yelled in the man’s ear. ‘I’ll come back for you – stay there, that’s an order.’
Sullivan nodded and spat water, and Ryder turned again for the channel. Oliver’s horse had fought clear and was ploughing purposefully for shore, but another was already rolling away, a spiral of blood staining the sea about its broken head. Bolton’s mare was still thrashing, eyes rolling white, lips retreating from dark gums to show big square teeth, and Oliver was trapped behind her, unable to reach the broken flatboat side. Bolton was crying ‘Bobbin, Bobbin!’ in an agony of distress and trying to pull her back on board, but the animal couldn’t climb in water, she was kicking against the artillery float and would break her back legs. The fourth horse had already done it, and was screaming and writhing as it spun away. Two, maybe three lost, and Ryder knew they had to save the mare.
The flatboat platform was weighed down in the water and the mare had both front hooves on it; she could make it if she had purchase from behind. He put his shoulder to one side of the chestnut rump, and yelled to Oliver on the other side, ‘Push her! We’ve got to push!’ For a second it was a toss-up, the fear of an NCO and the fear of the hooves, then Oliver put his shoulder to the mark, and Ryder felt the horse boosted upwards. The water took half the weight, its front legs skittered on the platform, and Ryder kicked down to give himself more thrust. Something solid under his foot gave a moment of purchase, he stamped down and hurtled back up, sending the horse flying upwards to Bolton pulling her bridle from the deck. He grabbed at the boat side, wincing at the splash as a second figure crashed through the surface and whooshed upright beside him. ‘Oliver,’ he thought, and turned.
A blur of grey, torn canvas, and a face that screamed. The mouth was a cave of teeth in blue distended cheeks, and the eyes black holes in which things squirmed. There were no hands or arms visible, nothing of the man left but a parcelled mummy that bobbed like a giant cork, and a nightmare face so close to Ryder’s own its stench seemed almost a parody of breath. His hands spasmed in shock and released their hold on the wood, ducking him once again below the water.
‘Cholera,’ his mind said. ‘Cholera, don’t drink it, don’t swallow.’ He surfaced and spat, aware suddenly of sky above him, the oaths of the sailor pushing at the corpse with a boat-hook, and the terrified wail of Oliver as he batted the thing away from him in childlike panic. It was just a corpse, a cholera victim dropped with insufficient weights from a ship ahead of their own, but for a moment memory had stripped away common sense and showed him the waterlogged and eyeless body of his own father.
He closed his eyes against it, the sound of Oliver’s helpless retching blending with an old boyhood tune in his head, Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare … He wondered if Oliver’s grey mare would make it to shore, then became aware of his body rising in the water as the flatboat sprang back to the level. The howitzer must be back on its own float, they were seaworthy again, and a voice was already yelling ‘Out of the water! Back on board right now!’ Bloody Jarvis. Let him wait.
But Sullivan didn’t dare, and Ryder turned to see him abandoning the driftwood and trying to swim. His face was in the water, the soaking haversack weighing him down, he was swimming blind and the freed artillery float driving right at him. Ryder flung forward, but heard the thud ahead of him, a chorus of voices, and saw Sullivan reeling back from the float to vanish beneath the waves.
Ryder struggled past the dead horse, glimpsed the sinking white stripe of a dragoon’s overalls, ducked for it and heaved the man up into the air. The sodden haversack pulled against him, Sullivan’s big body rolled across his own, then he was back under the water, it was in his mouth and nose, the burn scorching down into his lungs. Unbelievable, ridiculous to drown within feet of a boat, he puffed out his cheeks and kicked down. The haversack banged across his face, his flailing hands struck only Sullivan, and panic swelled in his head, driving out thought and sense, telling him only to breathe, breathe, and breathe air. Again the pain in his chest and throat, his eyes opening with shock and seeing only greyness of water, his ears strangely silent as they closed against the sound of his own drowning. Another desperate heave, but Sullivan’s weight was suddenly off him and he shot straight to the surface, blinking and spluttering, feet treading furiously as he coughed his lungs clear. Sullivan was up too, his chin supported by the dark blue arm of another man who looked anxiously at Ryder and said, ‘Are you all right?’
Oliver. The frightened prig he’d never thought much of had ignored Jarvis’s order and come to help. Ryder spat a last mouthful in reply, and reached out to get a hand in Sullivan’s belt. ‘Bloody fine, Poll, I’m only doing this for fun. Come on, back to the boat.’
The kid had saved him. Ludicrous, of course, and Ryder struck out even harder against the thought, but Sullivan was coming round and the fact was it took both of them to wrestle him back to the reaching arms of the sailors at the flatboat side. Ryder’s pride made him boost Oliver before hauling himself up after them, but it wasn’t enough, there was a debt there now, and the man Ryder used to be knew it had to be paid.
But something else had to be paid first, and as he shook the water from his ears he became aware that someone was shouting again and the voice was far too aristocratic to be Jarvis’s. He shoved sopping hair out of his eyes and turned.
Another raft had stopped in front of theirs, occupied by a single officer with a crowd of deferential servants. The officer wore the pink pants and blue dolman of the 11th Hussars, but the fur-lined cloak and mane of auburn hair under the busby established his identity beyond all doubt. It was James Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, commander of the entire Light Brigade, a man with the head of a lion and the brain of a brick.
‘A disgrace, sir,’ he roared at poor old Bog. ‘I won’t have one of my regiments paddling about like sailors in front of the entire fleet! What if my Lord Raglan had seen you, hey? A fine thing, ’pon my word, shaming the Brigade before the Commander-in-Chief!’
Ryder stood dripping on the deck, listening to the arrogant aristocratic voice and looking down at Sullivan curled and vomiting at his feet. A man had nearly died. Only a trooper, only a reprobate who’d already had to be whipped like a dog, but a man had nearly died and Ryder’s anger seared his throat as if he were back in the water and drowning.
Cardigan ranted on. ‘When you order the men to return, it’s to happen immediately, sir, immediately! You let your own men make a fool of you!’
Marsh’s voice sounded half strangled. ‘I’m most sorry, my lord. The men will of course be disciplined.’
‘See they are,’ said Cardigan, waving loftily for his oarsmen to resume. ‘Disgrace to the Brigade. You damn well see they are.’
Punishment, of course, the commanders’ solution for everything that went wrong, and Ryder was under no illusions as to whose it would be. Cardigan was on his way, but the damage was done, he could see it in Marsh’s face: the tense, thin-lipped look of an officer who’d been upbraided in front of his men and was determined to pass on the favour as soon as he could. He shouted to the midshipman, ‘Get under way, damn you,’ then turned ominously to Jarvis. ‘Sar’nt-major! I told you to get those men out of the water.’
‘And I ordered it, sir,’ said Jarvis, turning towards Ryder with a look of pleasurable anticipation. ‘They deliberately disobeyed.’
Ryder didn’t need to hear Oliver’s terrified gasp beside him to understand. It had taken a rough sea and a drowning man to do it, but Troop Sergeant-Major Jarvis had found his chance at last.
The rest of the journey had the blur of nightmare for Oliver. The flatboat was moving and sailors bailing out from the broken side, but part of him didn’t care if they sunk or not. His life was ruined and over, and the terror was a clawed hand round his throat.
Why had he done it, why? He’d heard Jarvis’s order, what had possessed him to ignore it? He’d never been in trouble before, never even been reprimanded, he’d never been able to bear it and couldn’t now. Even a disapproving look from one of the ushers at school had been a torment until he could wipe out the stain with a ‘Well done, Oliver,’ and a smile. And this would be more than a look. He watched Captain Marsh in conference with Jarvis, he waited for the summons and wanted only to be dead before it came.
‘Step forward, Ryder!’ called Jarvis. ‘Oliver!’
They were on a broken raft that bucked beneath them like an untrained horse, it wasn’t like parade and he didn’t know the rules. ‘Come on, Polly,’ said Ryder beside him, and his voice was deep and calming. ‘Let’s go and have a little chat with the officer.’
He understood that, he could do it, and he followed Ryder across the slopping boards with desperate trust. Captain Marsh didn’t seem comfortable either, and that too was cause for hope. He was an officer, he’d always been fair, he must see that no Christian could have let Sullivan and Ryder drown, he must see it, he must.
‘Bad business, men,’ said Marsh, shaking his head sadly. ‘Those Guards spotted us, you know, and his lordship saw it. Disobeying an order and at a time of war.’
The words hit him like stones. The Articles of War, the drum roll before a flogging …
‘Yes, sir,’ said Ryder. ‘But not Oliver. He was acting under my orders.’
His head swam with disbelief. Had Ryder ordered him? Had he missed it in the noise of the sea? Then he remembered what he’d seen as he’d started up the flatboat side, Ryder going under, Ryder drowning, Ryder in no position to give an order to anyone, and stared at the corporal in something close to awe.
‘Your