Into the Valley of Death

by A L Berridge

  And Ryder had said ‘well done’. He’d killed too, but he’d done it as if it were natural, and didn’t seem in the least shaken afterwards. Oliver looked furtively at him, but he seemed quite ordinary, he was leaning forward in the saddle to watch Doherty talking to Cardigan. That was how a soldier was meant to be, so why did it feel so different for himself?

  Ryder’s face tightened, and Oliver became aware of Cardigan’s voice rising angrily. ‘And now, sir,’ he was saying, ‘perhaps you will have the goodness to explain how you encountered the enemy and failed to engage?’

  Doherty’s face went white under the beard, and a low growl murmured through the regiment. Everyone knew it was only the colonel who’d saved them from the ambush, and Cardigan was almost calling him a coward. Ryder muttered ‘Bastard’, but then his expression changed and Oliver looked up to see a third horseman slipping out from the column to talk to Cardigan. The ADC was taking a hand.

  He spoke very quietly, but Cardigan’s face seemed to be growing less mauve. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, ‘Oh yes, very well then, perfectly satisfactory. But let me tell you, it would have been a different thing if I’d been there, dammit, what?’

  The ADC was turning his horse and for the first time his voice was audible. Oliver thought he could even hear a smile in it as he said, ‘I’m sure it would, my lord. I shall be sure to say so in my report,’ then bowed politely and trotted away.

  The voice was familiar, so was that hint of laughter, and Oliver turned quickly to Ryder. Ryder gave a nod of agreement and just for a moment he smiled.

  The patrol moved off again, but Oliver was encouraged. It was like an omen, seeing ‘their’ officer again, and Ryder was already being friendlier, the way he’d been under the wagon. Perhaps he’d only been distant because they were on duty, and this evening he’d keep him company again, let him talk about what had happened with the Cossacks.

  He stuck close to Ryder’s side as they numbered off back at camp, but they were immediately surrounded by men of other regiments, all desperately jealous the 13th had been first to face the enemy. ‘What was it like?’ they all wanted to know. ‘What was it like?’ When they learned Ryder had fought two Russians at once he was practically mobbed. Ryder said only, ‘They’re damn good, those Cossacks, I’d say they’re tougher than we are,’ but Prosser and Moody still muttered sulkily together, and Jarvis watched with a lopsided twist to his mouth that Oliver didn’t care for at all.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said another voice, and he skipped back hastily as Lieutenant Grainger walked through the crowd. Grainger was their best officer, everyone said so, but he was so unobtrusive it was disconcertingly easy to forget he was there.

  He didn’t miss much either. He stood in front of Ryder, held out his hand, and said, ‘Come on, Corporal, let’s see that arm.’

  Ryder held out his right arm, and now everyone saw the sleeve was flapping open and underneath it was a bloodied dressing that might have been a handkerchief. The crowd murmured, and Cornet Hoare said ‘I say!’ in a tone of unmistakable envy.

  Grainger studied the dressing, then looked up. He had a pleasant face, young and friendly, it was only the little crinkles at the corner of his eyes that gave away his age. ‘All right, Corporal. Medical orderly – now.’

  Ryder was never insolent with Grainger. He said ‘Yes, sir’, saluted as if he meant it, and paused only to check Wanderer’s picket pole before walking away.

  The crowd hesitated, but someone yelled ‘Butcher’s out, lads, fresh meat on the beach,’ and at once it broke up in stampede. Oliver followed Ryder, determined to wait until they could go together, but Ryder just chucked him his mess-tin and said, ‘Get my ration, will you, Trooper? If Fisk gets there first there’ll be nothing left but the eyelashes.’

  It was probably true, judging by the way Fisk was elbowing his massive way through the mob, but Oliver still knew he was dismissed. That was fair enough, of course, Ryder was an NCO, but as he walked down to the beach he couldn’t help wishing their wagon was still there, that Mackenzie and Woodall hadn’t left, that things could be back as they were in the storm.

  The orderly peeled off the handkerchief with dirty fingernails and peered with drink-sodden eyes at the ensuing flush of blood. ‘It’s a cut.’

  Ryder resisted the urge to show him exactly what a cut was and how much it hurt. ‘Just bloody bind it, will you, Merrick? I don’t need a surgeon’s opinion.’

  ‘Won’t get one,’ said Merrick, fishing out a yellow-stained bandage that had probably come off six other men before Ryder even saw it. ‘Not for something this trivial.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ryder, resisting the cringing of his flesh as the dressing clamped stiffly over it. ‘Good of you to bother.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Merrick, grinning. ‘I’m sick of boils and cholera. Nice to see a proper wound for a change.’

  He was going to see a lot more of them, if those Cossacks were anything to go by. That was an ambush today, a deliberate, planned ambush, and it wasn’t hard to guess its purpose. Their ADC had spotted it, he’d as good as warned them under the wagon when he said the cavalry were the army’s only eyes. The Russians wanted to stop them seeing something, and Ryder was afraid he knew what.

  An army. Four hundred cavalry didn’t just sit about on their ownwithout infantry support, there was a whole damn army assembling out there, and probably getting bigger every day. Five days the Allies had sat around organizing supplies of things they ought to have brought with them, five days the Russians had used to build an army that was all but on the bloody doorstep. They needed to go now, now, before it was too late.

  But as he walked down to the beach he began to suspect their commanders were feeling the same urgency. The last baggage wagons had gone, the boats setting out for the fleet were carrying sick men back to the Kangaroo, and the RSM was standing at the camp markers intoning ‘Epaulettes and valises to the boats, see they’re marked with your names.’ The march was tomorrow, it must be. They were getting off their arses at last and marching out to war.

  He strode more briskly onto the sand, threading his way expertly through the cooking fires, but a new sound caught his attention, a lighter note in the hubbub that brought him to an abrupt halt. Three troopers were chatting round a nearby fire, but that was a woman laughing with them, a fair-haired girl in a blue dress kneeling over a sizzling pan, and his heart gave a little jump as he recognized Sally Jarvis.

  He shouldn’t be surprised. Landing the wives was only one more sign of imminent departure, and of course Sally’d be here. Of course she’d be laughing and joking on the brink of a battle, she was like that, she was the happiest person he knew. There was no surprise in any of it, but still his footsteps faltered, slowed and stopped, because she was Sally Jarvis and he liked to look at her.

  It wasn’t easy for a woman to look beautiful when she was on the strength of a regiment, but Sally Jarvis managed it. Lucie Jordan’s rouge had run out, she’d stopped bothering with the curling papers, and her face was leathered by sun and bad temper, but Sally was unchanged. She couldn’t be more than twenty but she still kept a matronly neatness, her figure always trim, her dress clean, her fair hair scrupulously bound back, and she was always smiling.

  The troopers drifted back to their own fires, still grinning happily. Ryder hesitated, but Sally looked up and smiled and it would have been rude to walk away. He strolled to the fire and said feebly, ‘Hullo, Sally.’

  She fanned away the smoke to examine him with those wonderful dark-lashed eyes. ‘You look half dead, Ryder. Is it your arm?’

  He blinked. ‘It’s just a cut. Did the sar’nt-major … ?’

  Her smile faded, and she turned back to the pan. ‘Oliver. He wanted to ask about Ronnie Stokes, poor boy, but I’m afraid he’s dead. So is Jimmy Byrd.’

  He noticed with compunction the dark circles under her own eyes. ‘Was it bad, Sal?’

  She stirred the beef. ‘It was quick. Byrd wanted me to write a let
ter for his people.’

  Bitterness swamped him. ‘Poor sod. What could you say – died of cholera in a war about nothing?’

  Her eyes flashed with anger as she looked up. ‘I wrote what he bloody wanted, Ryder, what the hell else should I do?’

  She’d inherited her vocabulary from her sailor father, and some of the troop thought it fun to make her use it. Ryder wasn’t one of them. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

  She shrugged and went back to the beef.

  He cast about for something that might lift his status from utter brute. ‘How did Oliver take it? About Ronnie Stokes?’

  That did it, she looked up again and the smile was back. ‘He was fine, truly. He was prepared for it and of course he’s a Christian. But he’s lonely, Ryder, I wish you’d look out for him. He’s a nice lad.’

  He suppressed a twinge of guilt. ‘Then I won’t be much good for him, will I?’

  She laughed, and began to pile beef into a mess-tin. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Everyone’s going to need friends now, Ryder, even you. They say on the Jason we’re off tomorrow.’

  We. He looked at her delicate hands on the spoon, the glimpse of bare forearm under the loose blue sleeve, and was struck for the first time by the reality of wives at war. ‘Why the hell couldn’t you stay on the ship? The fleet’s going to follow us round the coast, isn’t it? They could easily land you all at Sebastopol.’

  ‘Like the heavy baggage?’ she said. ‘The siege guns? Why do you think women come on the strength if they don’t want to be near their husbands?’

  The thought of her being near Jarvis turned his stomach. ‘It’s a sixty-mile march, Sal.’

  She began to clean the pan with sand. ‘We’ll be all right, we haven’t the heavy uniforms. Merrick’s taking my baggage in the cart, anyway, I’m going to be a nurse.’

  He couldn’t think of a more revolting job for a woman. ‘What does the sar’nt-major think about that?’

  ‘Sixpence a day,’ she said, and smiled. ‘There won’t be much laundry on the march, but you’re going to need nurses.’

  For a second she looked at him, and he saw in her eyes the understanding that had been missing in the orderly’s. Then her face lightened, he turned and saw the sergeant-major standing watching them.

  ‘Hullo, Jarvis,’ she said, smiling with pleasure. ‘Look, I’ve cooked you some beef.’

  ‘I can see it,’ said Jarvis, not moving. ‘Well, Corporal?’

  He wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. ‘Picquet duty, Sar’nt-major?’

  It was worth a week of it just for the spark of frustration in Jarvis’s eyes. He muttered ‘Picquet duty. Parade in ten minutes,’ and sat down to eat his beef.

  Ryder managed to walk away with a fair appearance of briskness. No sleep, no supper, but Sally had shown concern and Jarvis had just looked petty, there was comfort in that. He felt a slight qualm at the thought of the offhand way he’d treated Oliver, but the kid would have more respect in the troop after today, he wouldn’t need the friendship of that well-known callous bastard Harry Ryder. Ryder didn’t need it either, whatever Sally said. He managed perfectly well on his own.

  The cooking fires were glowing in the dusk like miniature hearths of home. He walked past the laughter and boisterousness in the messes, the pools of quiet as the younger married men were reunited with their wives, the cackling of the older women as they lashed out with ladles at the horseplay of the troopers, he walked alone through it all and wondered why the tiredness was back and throbbing in his bones like an ache.

  Oliver peered at the blood beading on the surface of the steak and wondered if it was done. Woodall would know, but Woodall was at the Grenadiers’ camp nearly a mile inshore.

  ‘Why are you cooking Ryder’s, anyway?’ asked Fisk, eyeing it avariciously. ‘He’ll eat with the NCOs, won’t he?’

  Oliver knew that now. The others had gone; Ryder wouldn’t bother leaving his own mess just for Private Oliver. ‘It’ll save him time, won’t it? He’s been on picquet a lot lately, he must be ravenous.’

  ‘Toady,’ said Fisk, and went on watching the pan.

  Bolton looked up mournfully. ‘I’m sorry about Stokes, Ol-Pol. You’ll miss him, won’t you?’

  He already did. He thought with sadness of the cards he’d been so careful to remove from his valise, and wondered if he shouldn’t have let them go back to the ship with the rest. What good were they now? Bolton would never follow the rules and Fisk would probably eat them. Aloud he said, ‘He’s in a better place, Tommy.’

  ‘Isn’t everyone?’ said Fisk gloomily. He studied his empty mess-tin.

  Bolton stiffened. ‘Look, Ol-Pol, there’s Ryder. On picquet, look, next to Jordan.’

  Oliver gazed out over the darkening beach. The inlying picquet was already telling off from parade, and Bolton was right, the last in the line was Ryder. ‘That’s ridiculous. He was on last night and the night before.’

  ‘When do you think he’ll drop?’ said Fisk, licking out his mess-tin. ‘Bet you a bob it’s tomorrow on the march.’

  Oliver looked at him in horror. ‘Someone should talk to the captain.’

  Fisk’s tongue stopped mid-lick. ‘Give over, Poll, you’ll give me indigestion. You peach on Jarvis he’ll have you triced up and flogged in a week.’

  Oliver’s stomach gave a little heave. Fisk might be joking, but he remembered how Jarvis had looked at Ryder on the boat, and was very afraid he wasn’t. ‘I suppose it’s only inlying picquet. I could bring him his supper anyway.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Fisk, dropping his mess-tin abruptly. ‘What if Jarvis sees you, eh? Or Moody or Prosser, which is the same bloody thing. You stay clear.’

  Oliver tightened his jaw. ‘There’s no regulation against it.’

  ‘Oh, blow the regs,’ said Fisk. He heaved himself up straight and jabbed a fat finger at Oliver’s face. ‘Listen, Polly, you listen to your Uncle Albie. You’ve been getting altogether too close to Harry Ryder lately, and it’s got to stop.’

  Oliver had never seen him so serious. ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘Then he didn’t ought to be,’ said Fisk. His face was growing redder and he seemed to have completely forgotten the beef. ‘Remember Sullivan, do you? Jarvis didn’t like him, thought he was disrespectful, he was engineering that one for weeks. And if Jarvis didn’t like Joe I’m telling you he fair hates Harry Ryder. There’s going to be one bloody big explosion there and when she blows you don’t want to be in the middle.’

  The unfairness ached in his head. This was how things had felt on the flatboat, everything turned upside-down and wrong. He yearned for the security of his old world, where people cared how he did, where he worked for fear of punishment and was rewarded with a ‘well done’.

  Ryder had said it, just this afternoon. Oliver relived the moment in his mind and found another memory coming back to him, Ryder shouting ‘Shoot him, Polly!’ with a desperation that sounded like fear.

  He laid the steak in the mess-tin. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good,’ said Fisk. ‘Cut it in three, Poll.’

  He shut the tin with a click. ‘No, I’m taking it to Ryder.’ He ignored Fisk’s outraged splutter, gathered his things and walked away. Moody and Prosser both looked round as he passed their fire, but it didn’t matter, he was within the rules, he was safe.

  The picquet was on the edge of the main camp on the plateau above the beach. The horses were pegged, ready saddled and bridled, but the men themselves sat chatting in little groups or laying out blankets to make beds. Oliver searched in the dark until he found Wanderer, and there was Ryder behind him, sprawled out on a pile of oat-straw, and already fast asleep.

  Oliver stooped to lay the tin by the straw, but it clinked against a stone and at once Ryder’s eyes snapped open. Oliver jumped back in embarrassment and said quickly, ‘It’s just your rations. I thought …’

  Ryder sat up and ran his hands through his hair. ‘No, that’s kind. Thanks, Poll.’ He
smiled wearily and reached for the tin.

  Oliver said tentatively, ‘I might have overcooked it.’

  Ryder was already cutting into it. ‘No, it’s fine.’ He chewed in silence for a minute, then said indistinctly, ‘God, this is good.’

  Oliver blinked, but Ryder was happy and the blasphemy somehow didn’t feel that important. He stood watching him wolf the steak, and realized in a confused way he was happy himself.

  He dropped his haversack and blanket and sat down. There was something calming about the picquet line after dark, sitting safe in the shadow of that long warm wall of horses, looking up at the openness of a clear night sky. He leaned back against the straw pile and listened comfortably to the rhythmic munching in nosebags, the odd little snorts, the scuff of an irritable hoof, and the murmur and rustle of men preparing to sleep.

  He said, ‘I hesitated today. That Cossack. I hesitated.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ryder. His voice was very quiet, and Oliver wondered if he felt it too, the peacefulness all around them. ‘It doesn’t matter, Polly. You won’t next time.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  There was a clink as Ryder laid down the tin. ‘Because today was your first, and that’s always a shock. The next will be easier.’

  He had served before. Oliver considered asking him about it, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was Ryder not minding he knew. ‘I think I was scared.’

  Ryder gave a funny little chuckle like a snort. ‘Good. Fear makes you fast, helps you fight, it keeps you alive. The time to worry is when you lose it.’

  He thought about that. ‘What if it’s bad, though? If I run away.’