by A L Berridge
Across the Roadstead, the distant North Side of Sebastopol had been their first choice for assault, but the coastal fort of Constantine protected it from the sea, five batteries enclosed it in a circle of artillery, and the solid block of a star fort kept the road open to Odessa and beyond. Raglan had taken one look, and marched the army on round to the south.
Not that the South Side looked much better. Here was the main town, split in two by the Man-of-War Harbour, but while the surrounding wall didn’t look too serious an obstacle, Ryder was less sanguine about the bastions. He could see four from where he sat, but last night’s patrol said there were more all round the town, doubtless thrown up in response to the helpful warnings of the London Times.
And they were getting bigger as he watched. Earthworks were being heaped high in front of them, a turret going up on the round white tower of the Malakoff, and the sited cannon dwarfed by the hulking 64-pounder naval guns being hauled into place beside them. Tiny figures of men scurried like insects to build up the walls, more of them laboured in the nearby quarry, while the brighter coloured blobs were women, hurrying between the bastions with baskets of earth for the ramparts. Some of the blobs were very small, and Ryder felt his throat constrict as he swallowed.
‘Why don’t they get the children out, poor things?’ said Bolton sorrowfully. ‘The road’s open to the north.’
‘Because they’re not scared of us, are they?’ said Jordan. ‘They’ve seen how slow we are, they reckon they’ve got till Christmas.’
A shout, someone calling ‘Look out, sir!’ as Captain Marsh skipped back from the crest, and down below Ryder heard the boom of cannon. The crump of the ball smashing into the hillside followed almost at once, and a slab of grey rock sheered clean away to roll down to the Chernaya. A second bang and the ball whooshed over at them, the lines buckling into each other in their haste to back away. The shot gouged safely through the earth on their right, but a horse crunched against him as the ranks tangled and he yelped at the impact on his wounded thigh.
The line backed hastily down the slope to re-form. At least his new mare stayed steady, untroubled by either cannon or jolt, and he urged her easily back into place. She’d been captured at the Alma and he’d never bothered to name her, but now he patted her neck and said ‘Natalia’. She snorted peaceably, and he tweaked her ears and said ‘Tally’.
He looked up to find Jarvis watching him. He’d seen the collision, of course, and as usual his gaze slid down to Ryder’s still-bandaged leg. Hardly anyone in the troop believed his story of a stray musket ball, but it was clearly tormenting the sergeant-major that he was quite unable to prove it. It was a strange army that would blame a man for choosing to fight the enemy rather than rejoin his own unit, but it was Jarvis’s army and Ryder guessed the irregularity was eating at his soul. Yet he thought there was maybe something else in it too, and once or twice he’d seen in those piggy little eyes a glint of something very like jealousy.
He could understand that. The whole Light Brigade were panting for a fight of their own, poor buggers, and no one could blame them. The pressure was greater than ever now the Heavies had landed and the Lights lived in dread of their cavalry rivals seeing action first. It was worst for his own regiment. Three times now they’d faced the enemy, three times they’d fought through fear to the action point, and every time they’d been denied it. Ryder could see it in Oliver all the time now, the jumpiness and febrile brightness of the eyes, the desperate need for a fight, any fight, to kill the doubts for good and all.
But as they descended to the plateau he began to see signs of hope. The Chersonese Uplands were rough terrain, a mass of hills and crags and ridges, some no more than bare rock, some covered with jungles of stunted oaks and thorn bushes, but the infantry were already toiling across it, their red coats brightening the barren country like poppies in a field. Artillery was rumbling along the Woronzoff Road, and a trail of ox-drawn carts plodding up from the Col de Balaklava, the smoother route down to the ships. The defences weren’t impenetrable yet, the Allies would be ready in perhaps two days, then they could storm the bloody place and be done.
He said, ‘It’s coming, Poll. Any day.’
Oliver’s eyes were anxious. ‘But will it be us? They might not think the ground’s good for cavalry.’
It was bloody awful for cavalry, riddled with caves and crevices and gashed across the centre by the broad gorge of the Careenage Ravine. ‘It doesn’t matter. We won’t be going in first anyway, not against artillery. We’ll be for the final rush, when we can sweep down from the hills and right in their gates.’
Oliver hesitated, and Ryder noticed how tightly he was holding his reins. ‘Unless we get another wrong order. Like that officer at the Alma. If somebody sends us against cannon.’
Ryder felt a jolt in the stomach. So that was what he’d been agonizing over all this time. He glanced behind to check Grainger was out of earshot and said, ‘Forget him, Polly. He’s probably been sent home in disgrace.’
Oliver looked sideways at him. ‘So you’ve been watching for him too?’
He didn’t miss much, damn him. ‘Come on, we had Staff trotting past every five minutes on the march. If he’d been there we’d have seen him, wouldn’t we?’ If there was any justice he’d be somewhere behind them, in a hole in the ground at the Alma.
Oliver studied his mare’s neck. ‘All right, but just for argument. If someone did order us to take that white tower, what would we do?’
With Lucan and Cardigan in charge it was more than likely. He said, ‘I tell you what we do, Poll. We take it, that’s all. We charge right up and bloody take it.’
Something sparked in Oliver’s face as he looked up. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Of course we do. That’s right.’ He smiled suddenly, and the anxiety faded from his eyes.
Ryder grinned back, warmed by a sense of recognition. Oliver wasn’t frightened of the Russians, he was afraid of fear. There was the right fire in him somewhere, it would come when he needed it, and that was all that mattered.
Perhaps it was infectious, but the whole column seemed livelier as they trotted down towards the Col. Even the marching feet and rattling of wheels seemed brisker and more businesslike than they had on the march, as if the whole army were rolling up its sleeves and saying ‘Now then!’ One of the linesmen called ‘Hullo, the “look-ons” have been for a look-out!’ but Jordan called back good-humouredly ‘Look up your backside, flatfoot!’ and the whole troop laughed.
‘Look at that,’ said a voice to his right, and even that sallow Moody had something approaching animation in his face. ‘Wait till the Russkies try their teeth on that.’
It was certainly a huge gun coming up the road, a Lancaster 68-pounder that must have been dismounted from the ships. Ryder guessed that was where the Russians’ own big guns had come from, stripped from their ships before they sunk them, and smiled at the irony of two fleets fighting it out in a land battle. But it was a strange thing for the British to do, and hardly worth it for a two-day storming when the guns would have to be silenced as the men went in. He was still puzzling over it when they passed the artillery team and saw the ox-cart coming up behind.
‘Gawd,’ said Fisk. ‘Gawd, but that’s …’ Jordan was laughing and saying ‘What on earth do we want those for?’ but behind him Ryder heard the quiet voice of Grainger saying ‘Oh God, no. Oh God, no,’ and understood.
The cart was filled with digging equipment. Pick-axes, spades, sacks of entrenching tools, all buttressed against the jolting by coils of wickerwork, the familiar cylindrical shapes of gabions. The cart behind had more of them, empty gabions and bundled piles of sacks, all of which he knew with terrible certainty were designed to be filled with earth.
‘The siege train,’ said young Hoare in front, the question pitching his voice higher. ‘Have we landed the siege train?’
Yes, they bloody had. Luck had dealt them a glorious hand, an enemy still unprepared despite all the warnings. Luck had given t
hem a war for the winning in one swift and decisive battle. Luck was offering them a victory their stupidity had never deserved, and Lord Raglan was throwing it away in one move.
He was going to make them dig in for a bloody siege.
He was right. Ryder was right. Oliver saw it in every cart they passed after that, but what was worse was seeing it in the faces of their officers. It was a mistake, they all thought so, and he knew he was struggling to keep faith. It was one thing to doubt some of their officers, he had no choice after the Alma, but a fellow had to believe the commanders knew what they were doing or everything was for nothing.
They rounded the Col into the South Valley of the Balaklava plain, and his spirits rose at the sight of the British Army. The valley lay like a bowl between the curved Sapoune Ridge on this side and the Causeway Heights on the other, a great empty space boasting only a few ploughed fields and vineyards, but today it was full of redcoats and baggage wagons and hummed with the voices of thousands of men. There were gaps among them, bare patches where regiments had already set out for the Chersonese Uplands, but it was still a jolly impressive sight. Even more important, he could see the Guards parading in the distance, and down towards the village of Kadikoi he heard the strain of Highland pipes. Their friends were still here. Every night of the march they’d talked and played cards together, and perhaps it would be the same at Balaklava.
But they’d hardly sat down at the fire that evening when Woodall said importantly, ‘We’re off tomorrow. Moving to the Uplands to be nearer the action.’
Oliver felt instantly bleak. ‘But that’s five miles away. How can we play?’
Woodall put the pan on the fire. ‘Oh, we may not be that far. They won’t put us right by Sebastopol, will they?’
It could still be more than an hour’s walk, and Oliver couldn’t see Jarvis letting them take out troop-horses. He said miserably, ‘Are you going too, Niall? Is it everyone?’
Mackenzie was crushing the coffee beans with unusual vigour. ‘It is not. The 93rd are to stay behind like women to guard the base.’ He smashed down hard with the rock and sent a little chip of bean flying in the air.
‘Oh, hard luck,’ said Woodall kindly. ‘But someone has to do it, don’t they? Can’t leave it to those sailors.’
‘Or the cavalry,’ said Ryder. He was in one of his dark moods this evening, like he’d been after the Alma. Everything about him looked careless, from the unbuttoned coat to the untidy hair, and he kept nudging the fire irritably with his boot. ‘I bet we’ll be staying too.’
‘You are that,’ said Mackenzie, with the gloomy satisfaction of a fellow sufferer. ‘It’s our Sir Colin and Lord Lucan have the charge of it, keeping the gorge open at Kadikoi.’
Oliver reminded himself it was an important job. The gorge was the only route to the ships in Balaklava Harbour, and if the Russians took it the entire British Army would be cut off. Then he thought of the siege happening, Sebastopol falling, the cavalry going home without having fought a single battle, and it was all just too horrid to bear.
‘Chin up, young Polly,’ said Woodall, rescuing the battered beans from Mackenzie and stirring them into the pan. ‘Think of us roughing it in the Uplands while you’re nipping in and out of the fleshpots of Balaklava.’
Mackenzie looked at him out of narrowed eyes. ‘Aye, that’s true. You’ll be awful muddy after days in those trenches and the Russians taking pot-shots at you the while.’
Woodall stopped stirring. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The Guards don’t dig. We’re there for the fighting, that’s all.’
‘If there is any,’ said Ryder. ‘How can you besiege a town from one side? The North’s wide open, they can bring in food and reinforcements, they can hold out for ever.’
Woodall stirred again. ‘Oh, I’m sure we won’t wait. The artillery will knock down their defences, then it’ll be in with the bayonet, just like the Alma.’
‘Aye, that’s what our officers say too,’ said Mackenzie. ‘A big bombardment, then a grand battle after. It’ll be a sight to see.’
‘Then we’d better get a move on, hadn’t we?’ said Ryder. ‘In two weeks that place will be impregnable.’ He sprawled on his back and looked at the sky.
Oliver listened to the familiar scrape of the spoon in the pan, and felt a sense of sadness like a song. They might never do this again. This might be the last time the four of them were ever together. He said, ‘Shall I get the cards out?’
Woodall poured the coffee. ‘Got to give you a last chance at revenge, haven’t I? I’m one and sixpence to the good so far.’
‘Not for long,’ said Mackenzie darkly, sitting up with a look of purpose.
Oliver dug out the box, but Ryder still hadn’t moved. He said, ‘Ryder?’ Then, more tentatively, ‘Harry?’
Ryder sat up and dragged his hands through his hair. ‘All right, what else is there to do? Let’s play.’
Day after day of watching the carts go by. There was a constant stream of them up both the Woronzoff and the Col, gun teams and limbers, caissons with shells, cartloads of timber from dismantled roofs in Balaklava to make platforms and fascines. The Heavy Brigade shared the patrolling now, and most of the time Ryder just sat in the saddle on vedette duty with nothing to do but watch the carts go by.
It was so bloody slow. The gun teams had horses, but the carts were pulled by underfed oxen who nodded in their traces as they strained to haul their loads six miles up to the lines. There weren’t enough of them either, and fresh meat in the rations always meant another had dropped dead from overwork. Only one of the regular carts inspired Ryder with any confidence, a green-banded monster pulled by two fat bullocks whose driver wore a corporal’s stripes but looked very like Bloomer of the 7th. If anyone could find forage for cattle when half the army was fighting for it then that would be Bloomer.
But the carts weren’t the only things moving. Cossacks were about again, little packs of five or six, and nearly every day Ryder had to walk his horse slowly in a circle to show the camp an enemy force was approaching. Once he actually had to gallop the circle to show a bloody great army was on its way, but it seemed to be only a reconnaissance. Lucan led the cavalry to the entrance to the North Valley at the end of the Causeway Heights, but the two forces only glared at each other before a few shots from the Horse Artillery sent the Russians trotting unhurriedly away. If they’d done it to see what the British would do in response to an attack on the Balaklava base, then they certainly had their answer. Nothing.
Nothing. The tents were landed, the field kitchens started again, washing went up on the lines and the camp began to look as permanent as Varna. Only one thing changed, and that was a contingent of Turks beginning to build redoubts along the Causeway Heights. The Allies were here to attack, they were here to take Sebastopol, so naturally Raglan put all his energies into organizing a defence.
The waiting was unbearable. The French opened trenches on the night of the 9th, the British the night after, but all it meant to Ryder was the boom of distant cannon as the Russian guns targeted the work, and the growing number of carts making the return trip with casualties for Balaklava. There was a race going on out there, a race to win a war, and he was stuck on bloody useless vedettes, wanting more than anything just to know.
Then it came again, ‘G’ Troop’s turn to patrol the Uplands, and at last he knew the worst. The spires and domes of Sebastopol were almost hidden behind the growing ramparts, and the white tower of the Malakoff had turned into a two-storeyed fortress. Even the Little Redan round the curve was bristling with guns behind walls that were now stone as well as earth. The British lines faced the big Redan and Flagstaff Bastion, and beyond them lay the Central Bastion, the Land Quarantine Bastion, and God knew how many batteries between. Sebastopol wasn’t a town any more, it wasn’t even a fort, it was all but a bloody castle.
But there were changes on the plateau too. The land was scarred with deep, reinforced trenches, and men were hurrying to lay down gun platforms and sh
ore up mounds of earth. Timber carts were dotted all along the lines with men almost throwing the wood off them to the constant barking of shouted orders. A Lancaster was being hauled onto a platform, a sergeant screaming ‘Hold her, hold her!’ as men strained and heaved like mules in the chains, and the great muzzle bounced and juddered as if in anticipation of the firing to come.
‘Oh, well done, our side!’ cried Cornet Hoare. ‘We’re nearly ready, aren’t we? It’ll be any day now.’
A burly sergeant rolling a gabion glanced round at the voice, and the look on his face stayed with Ryder as they rode on. Raglan might not realize what they were up against, but by God, the men did. Speed, the need of it, he could see it in their faces and voices, in the blur of hands hurling earth into gabions, the savage hacking of pick-axes, the grey exhaustion of the slumped figures toiling back to camp after days and nights without rest. They knew.
‘Look,’ said Oliver, and he sounded agitated. ‘Look, isn’t that … ?’
Ryder looked. The road ahead was filled with redcoats as they approached the camps, but one gleam of red was higher and moving faster, the saddlecloth of a man on a bay horse trotting out of the end of the Careenage Ravine. He wore the cocked hat of the Staff.
‘It’s him,’ said Oliver. ‘The same saddlecloth, look where the sun’s catching it. It had gold lions on, didn’t it?’
He hadn’t been close enough to see. ‘If you say so. What’s it matter now?’
Oliver jerked his head. ‘Only that it’s odd. Where’s he been? Why haven’t we seen him?’
Ryder looked sharply at him. ‘Perhaps he was wounded. Perhaps he was at the rear of the march. Perhaps he’s a bloody devil who only materializes at suitably dangerous moments. Come on, Poll, give it up, will you? We’ve more important things to worry about.’