by A L Berridge
The hat was a prop, a pretence as much as the horse and saddlecloth. Yes, this was him, the man they’d pursued all this time, but he wasn’t a staff officer, he wasn’t even a traitor. Their enemy was a Russian and a spy.
PART III
Inkerman
‘[T]he bloodiest struggle ever witnessed since war cursed the earth.’
Alexander Kinglake, chronicler to the Crimean Expedition
17
25 October 1854, noon to 10.00 p.m.
The battle had stopped. Woodall wasn’t sure it was actually over, but no one was shooting at anything and the Highlanders were sprawling on the grass lighting pipes. He’d fired two shots the whole time.
The Russians were making themselves quite at home in the conquered redoubts, but no one seemed to be trying to boot them out of it. The Fourth Division were busy manning an abandoned one the Russians hadn’t bothered to occupy anyway, while his own First Division seemed to have been marched all this way just to stand and watch. Utter disgrace.
‘Should have used the First to retake the redoubts,’ he said to the Rifleman next to him. ‘They wouldn’t have given up for a few musket balls. They should have sent the Guards.’
He’d spoken louder than he meant, and an officer called out ‘Quite right, that man!’ to approving laughter from his little contingent of Grenadiers. Woodall reddened, but after a moment the lieutenant strolled over to join him. ‘I know you, don’t I? You’re Woodall.’
It was their own Lieutenant Verschoyle and Woodall froze with alarm. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘What on earth for?’ said Verschoyle, amused. ‘I’ve heard you’re a very pretty shot. Are you still crocked up?’
Woodall touched the bandage beneath his bearskin, then let his fingers fall away. ‘No, sir. I’ll rejoin my unit when we’re relieved here.’
‘I think we’re relieved now,’ said Verschoyle, nodding towards the two regiments of Highlanders approaching from the Col. ‘But they’re looking for sharpshooters, old boy – have you thought about it?’
He had, he’d thought about creeping through brambles and lying out in scrapes all day, he remembered saying as much to Ryder, and how Ryder had looked when he said it. ‘Yes, sir. I’d like to do it.’
‘Good show,’ said Verschoyle. ‘They’re looking for people to fill in for a couple of days, lost a few in a shoot-out with a Russian picquet. It’s a Captain Goodlake running it at present, tell him I sent you. He’s Coldstream, of course, but well – we’re all Guards.’ He smiled wickedly and sauntered away.
Woodall slung the Minié over his shoulder. Coldstream was bad, crawling in mud was worse, but it was a place to belong and a place to start. If it was heroic and dangerous he wanted it. He’d just go back to the hospital to collect his things before those thieving orderlies got their paws on them, then he’d –
‘Are you off, then?’ said Mackenzie, appearing in front of him with that sneaky silent approach all Scotsmen seemed to have. ‘You’re for the hospital?’
Woodall looked warily at him, but he seemed quite ordinary. ‘No, I’m back to the lines. They’ve asked for me, as a matter of fact. Specialist work, sharpshooting.’
‘Have they now?’ said Mackenzie. ‘Well, I’m glad to see you better.’
Woodall hesitated, thought of the word ‘sorry’, and couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Last night … it was bad last night, I was in a lot of pain.’
‘Aye,’ said Mackenzie, and actually put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I was thinking you were maybe not yourself.’
A sensation of panic rose in his throat. He struggled not to look at his shoulder, looked at Mackenzie instead and said, ‘My wife’s left me. Maisie’s gone.’
Mackenzie’s eyes widened, but there was no contempt in them, only shock and understanding. ‘Man, that’s a bad blow. Why ever did you not say?’
Woodall blinked. Could he have? Might it even help put things right with Ryder and Oliver if he did? He considered asking Mackenzie to tell them for him, but the hillside was filling with kilts and feathers and big Scottish bodies as the other Highland regiments arrived, and his companion was already joining cheerfully in the banter being hurled at the newcomers.
‘Ah, go back to your beds, you bunch of lassies,’ he yelled at a private of the 42nd. ‘You’ll have maybe heard how the 93rd stood alone?’
The man didn’t even grin. ‘Aye, in the absence of better men. But is it true, what they say of the rest of it? About the Light Brigade?’
Mackenzie’s smile faded abruptly. ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What, man? What about the Light Brigade?’
The Cossacks handed them over to the infantry at Traktir Bridge. The cavalry seemed to be returning to their camps at Chorgun, but they were taking mostly Turkish prisoners with them and Ryder wondered what was special about themselves.
Something certainly was. Light Brigade survivors were being herded together, and grey-coated Russian infantry clustered round them in a fascination that seemed mingled with awe. One stepped right up to Jarvis’s face and sniffed his breath before stepping back to shake his head with incredulity. ‘No drink!’ explained a huge, jolly gunner, giving Ryder a slap on the back that nearly made him faint. ‘No drink!’ Another did a whole pantomime of actions, frantic galloping, cannon firing ‘Boom, boom!’ and finally a tapping of his head and an expressive shrug. It was starting to look as if the Light Brigade had acquired a status of celebrity for its own sheer lunacy.
But a reputation for heroism had its uses. A magnificent figure announced as General Liprandi came to say what splendid fellows they were and that a selection of the most fit would be taken to Sebastopol to meet Prince Menschikoff himself. Ryder’s gunner beamed when he and Jarvis were chosen, and Ryder felt like smiling himself. It was ironic, perhaps, to be taken to the town they’d come to conquer, but it was a sight better than a camp prison for a man determined to escape.
Because he must. His information was vital, his commanders had to have it, and this time they’d be prepared to listen. There’d be no need for discretion or secrecy now it wasn’t about a British officer but a Russian spy.
And he was sure. It explained so much that had puzzled them – why nobody ever recognized the man or his saddlecloth, why he was able to move about so freely without apparent duties of his own. His English must be perfect, but the Bulgar had even said as much – and why would he tell an officer his English was ‘flawless’ unless he knew him to be a foreigner? No, it was true, it had to be, and wouldn’t even have been that difficult. The British Army was riddled with journalists and war-tourists, strangers no one ever questioned, and a man in uniform would simply be part of the landscape. All he’d needed was audacity, and it had been enough to carry him through.
Well, maybe it would be the same for himself. Sebastopol was a town at war, it would be crowded and chaotic, full of strangers and civilians, and there was a good chance he’d be able to disappear among them. Their infantry guards were friendly, even respectful, they weren’t chained or closely watched, they weren’t being treated like prisoners at all.
It was still a hard journey for wounded and exhausted men, and it was mid-afternoon when they finally rounded Careenage Bay. Their escorts led them to a heavily guarded stone archway cut under the bank of an aqueduct, and he realized this must be a side entrance to Sebastopol. He glanced casually up the bank, but there were more guards on the top and primitive houses built into the side, the bloody thing was impregnable. He looked down again and found Jarvis watching him with cool speculation in his eyes.
He turned away. Jarvis was yesterday’s problem and supremely irrelevant now. He concentrated on what was ahead of him, staying alert as he followed the others through the little tunnel and into a woodland clearing criss-crossed with white paths. They were at the base of another of those ravines, uncultivated and overgrown, but leading gradually up into the town itself.
They emerged onto a metalled road, marched through a gateway in a low grey wall, and were sudden
ly in the Korabelnaya suburb of Sebastopol. It was part of the town, he even saw the dome of a church, but this was a military cantonment and still felt like war. The place was dominated by huge white barracks, marching soldiers, and lines of infantry drilling on a square.
They marched down a long straight street towards the grey docks, and as they neared the harbour he wondered if this might be his chance. Their escort was already thinning, some marching off to billets with the jaunty air of returning conquerors, and others piling into large troop vessels for their trip across to the main Town Side. By the time their own little group of ten was ordered down to the quay there were only half a dozen infantry and two officers left to guard them.
The quay looked chaotic enough too, sailors and grey-coated soldiers milling about yelling at each other or leaning against stone bollards to share a quiet pipe. A steamer was in, little puffs of white spiralling into the sky as if the ship too was enjoying a leisurely smoke while her slaves did the sweaty business of unloading. A regular clang and clang drew his eyes to a growing pyramid of iron bars being carried from a skiff to join the shells and gabions, flour-sacks and sides of red beef already piled on the crowded quayside. Food and armaments, the same old business of war.
But this wasn’t Balaklava, and the patrolling soldiers weren’t going to let a man in Light Brigade blue sneak unnoticed onto a boat. A boat it would have to be, a way across to the unguarded Severnaya, the North Side over the Roadstead where the siege didn’t reach, but he’d need some kind of disguise to get on one, and his best chance of that lay ahead in the crowds of the main town just across the harbour.
They were crammed into two skiffs for the crossing, and to his disgust he found himself knee-to-knee with Jarvis. The sergeant-major seemed determined to keep control of him even here, he kept making odd stentorian noises and trying to catch his eye, but Ryder ignored him, hugged his knees and looked at their destination ahead.
The Grafskaya, their officer said to the boatman, the Town Side, the real Sebastopol, and there it was in front of them, drawing nearer with every pull of the oars. The domes and spires so far only glimpsed in the distance were becoming a real town with people in it, alive with the murmur of crowds and church bells ringing a peal of victory. In the pauses between the changes he heard a lighter, tinkling sound from a waterfront coffee-house and knew someone was playing the balalaika.
‘What are you up to, Ryder?’ whispered Jarvis hoarsely. ‘You wouldn’t be thinking of breaking out?’
In the middle of the harbour? He said ‘No,’ and kept his eyes on the approaching quay. There were a lot of civilians among the military, some hawking goods to the arriving soldiers, others maybe looking for a boat home after a day’s work in the town.
‘That’s “No, Sergeant-major” to you, Trooper,’ said Jarvis, his breath warm on Ryder’s cheek. ‘And you’re lying, you little prick, I know you by now.’
That was interesting, Jarvis with the mask off. If the TSM hadn’t been utterly insignificant in the scale of things Ryder might have prodded him further, but nothing mattered beyond the information he had to get back to Raglan. He said ‘I doubt it,’ and looked ahead.
Jarvis’s hand closed on his leg, right on the site of his old wound. ‘If you do anything irresponsible …’
Pain and fury finally broke his temper. He swung round and said, ‘Then it’s none of your business, is it?’
Jarvis’s eyes bulged like little marbles. ‘You speak to me like that again, and I’ll …’
‘You’ll what?’ said Ryder. ‘You’ve had my stripes, you’ve had me flogged, what are you going to do now, Sar’nt-major?’ The liberation suddenly struck him, and he gestured triumphantly at the Russians sitting around them. ‘Who are you going to tell?’
Jarvis’s face turned grey as the blood faded out of it. Then he gripped the side of the boat and said thickly, ‘You’re still in the army unless you’re deserting. Is that what you’re doing, Ryder? Deserting?’
The Russian officer was watching them curiously. Ryder smiled for his benefit and said, ‘I’m not doing anything, now shut your mouth before you get us both shot.’
Jarvis subsided, but his breathing sounded loud enough to power the boat. Ryder went on smiling just in case, but the officer’s attention had wandered and a moment later their skiff nudged gently against the landing stage and they were there.
‘There’ might have been London, only better. The landing stage was magnificent, white stone, white marble, level white steps leading up to tall great columns, and through them a square that made Piccadilly look like Meerut. Ladies in bright dresses walked on the arms of elegant white-gloved companions, a string quartet played Glinka, women with gaily coloured headscarves sold bread rolls, and a man with a samovar was yelling ‘Sbitén!’ and being swamped by soldiers thrusting coins at him for a mug of the hot, sweet-smelling liquid.
But it was not so good for him. He needed assorted rabble, the kind he’d see in London, but he wouldn’t pass for a moment in this clean and elegant crowd. If he’d been infantry he’d have had a grey greatcoat, he’d have been virtually indistinguishable from the Russian soldiers themselves, but his ragged blue coat and white-striped overalls made him as conspicuous as he’d been at Traktir Bridge.
It would have been so easy otherwise. Their guards didn’t seem to have the slightest fear of their escaping, and two were taking advantage of their officers’ inattention to share a yellow-papered cigarette behind one of the pillars. The officers were deep in conference with an elegant gentleman in a silky black fur coat, but Ryder’s attention sharpened when he realized the man was following the custom of high-born Russians before inferiors and speaking in exquisite French.
‘But not like this, my dear Borshevsky!’ he said, waving a fastidious white-gloved hand at them. ‘They’re disgusting! Have them cleaned up, I’ll send an escort in an hour or two.’
‘Their wounds, your honour,’ said one of the officers nervously. ‘It may take a little longer …’
‘Oh, just the bits that show,’ said the gentleman. ‘Tell Surgeon Piragoff they are priority – you understand?’
Ryder did. A hospital could be the perfect opportunity, full of civilians and, better still, civilian clothes. He had perhaps an hour to take advantage of it.
At least the place was close. The officers led them towards a grand building with Roman numerals carved on its handsome plinth, and as men came out with a bloodstained stretcher Ryder realized with astonishment this was the hospital itself. They passed through double doors into a vast open space with marble floor and a dizzyingly high ceiling, and he guessed in peace time it might have been an assembly hall for nobility. Now it was a field of beds and pallets and suffering men, just another army hospital like their own at Balaklava.
But different. There were no operating tables to shock the visitors, but a patient was being carried through another set of doors at the back, and a smell of ether drifted out to greet them. The floor was clean, the windows admitted daylight, and some of the men had wives sitting with them, comfortable looking women offering fruit and sausage from bulging carpet bags, while others had nuns kneeling beside them to pray.
But these were the only civilians. There were no discarded hats and overcoats, nothing he could steal in the way of disguise. The patients were all soldiers, probably men from the bastions wounded in the bombardment, and the only clothes visible were the grey coats spread over the beds as additional blankets.
His heart gave a little, soft thump. Why not? In a town at war, what better disguise than a Russian soldier? That spy had done it, passed right in among their own ranks without question; why shouldn’t Ryder do the same? He didn’t speak the language, but he knew da and nyet, and spasebo, and he would never forget the word perzhalsta he’d heard over and over again from Russian wounded at the Alma. Yes, no, thank you and please, he had four words of Russian and fluent French. It was enough.
If he could do it. Now was the time, their only guards were
chatting happily with patients and their officers were arguing with a surgeon. The prisoners were unattended, a sulky line standing awkwardly against the wall, and he stared hurriedly up and down the beds, looking for a coat that was unused and unwatched. A man near him was asleep, he could just reach out and tweak the coat from over him, but the nights were cold and he was reluctant to rob a wounded man of another layer to keep him warm.
He looked again for anyone covered only by a blanket. There was one such soldier at his feet, but when his gaze travelled upward he recoiled at the sight of the staring eyes and slackly open jaw. No one had noticed him yet, and Ryder was filled with sudden pity at the loneliness of it, to die unnoticed in a room full of strangers. He knelt beside the body, murmured ‘Go with God’, and gently closed the staring eyes. Across the room a nun touched her crucifix in acknowledgement, Christian to Christian, then turned to give her attention to her living patient. Suddenly awkward, Ryder withdrew his hand – and stopped. The dead man’s bed was only a straw-filled pallet, and behind his head was no pillow but a folded pile of grey cloth. A coat.
To rob the dead! But the boots on his own feet were testimony to his having already done just that, him and hundreds like him. In death they were all soldiers together, sharing what they had to keep going just that little bit longer. He cradled the dead man’s head with one hand, slid the coat out from under it with the other and laid it gently back down. Then he stood.
No one had noticed. Others of their line were exchanging fragments of French and English with the wounded Russians, both sides grinning with the pleasure of speaking with the comrade who was the enemy. The guards were still busy, the officers actually leaving, only Jarvis was watching him, and even Jarvis wouldn’t turn in one of his own. Ryder draped the coat nonchalantly over his arm and waited his turn for treatment.