by A L Berridge
It was quick. This was a patch-up operation for the convenience of a Russian prince, and when Ryder revealed the blood-soaked dressing on his back the orderly only wrapped another bandage over it and waved him on. He returned to the line, replaced his shirt and buttonless coat, and simply put the greatcoat on top. One of the guards was looking, but he’d have seen British soldiers in greatcoats and this might easily have been Ryder’s own. It wasn’t quite the same, the Russian coat seemed to have a faintly yellow tinge compared to the British version, but it was near enough indoors. Outside it would look Russian, but then that was exactly what he wanted.
The last prisoner was just dressing when their escort arrived. New, smartly dressed officers and four bored looking infantrymen, it couldn’t have been better. They didn’t know the prisoners by sight, they never even bothered to count them, they just dismissed the old guards and led them outside.
Now. Now, it had to be now, he drifted to the back of the line and watched for a chance to slip away. His shoulders tingled with it, his ears echoed with new clarity of sound, everything about him was wide open and searching. A band played military tunes down a boulevard, and he noted it as a landmark. They were marching down streets now, but too civilized still, again it might have been London. Carriages rattled by, men bustled in and out of shops with ordinary goods displayed in the windows, tea and coffee, paper and ink, a tailor’s shop, and in the window a frock-coat that might have been Raglan’s own. Ryder winced and looked away.
But there was hope here, and he felt it in the rising boisterousness around him. More and more soldiers were turning into the street, some laughing, some drinking, and all heading in the same direction as themselves. From the open doors of a church came the voices of a choir raised in a soaring Te Deum. Sebastopol was celebrating a victory, and then they turned a corner and saw it for themselves.
Another big square, but this one was heaving with grey-coated soldiers, the crowd of Ryder’s dreams, and all of them yelling in raucous song. In the centre stood a man on the base of a statue conducting with a bottle in one hand and his cap in the other. This was it, this was the place, but their escort kept them clear of the crowded middle and led them discreetly down the side. Even here there were chances, little unpaved alleys between the buildings, places he could duck into if the guards were distracted. One actually had two drunken soldiers sprawled asleep inside, complete with guns and forage caps, everything he needed, but the guard behind was too close and he had no choice but to walk by.
Then it came. The officer on the statue caught sight of them, stopped conducting, and gestured furiously to the crowd. At once the mob surged towards them, baying in approval, in vengeful anger, maybe even in friendliness, but what mattered was they were stampeding this way. Ryder backed against a wall as if in alarm, watched his guard swept past with the force of the throng, then swung round and plunged right into them, yelling without words as part of the crowd’s own roar. He was bare-headed, but so were they, and when he snatched a bottle from a staggering gunner the man only beamed and clapped him painfully on the back. Ryder took a quick swig, felt the wine kick exultantly in his head, and began to work back through the crowd, away from the centre and back to the alley he’d spotted before. No one was shouting after him, and he wondered if the guards had even noticed he’d gone.
There it was, a dark little gap between a music shop and what looked like a classical theatre. The sleeping soldiers were still there. He pulled the cap from the nearest, seized a fallen musket, and was turning to go when a boot scraped against stone and a bulky figure blocked the light from the square. He swivelled at it, bottle in one hand, musket in the other, and stopped in shock at the sight of Sergeant-Major Jarvis.
For half a second they stared at each other, then Ryder hurled himself at him, dragged him inside the alley and slammed his back against the wall. ‘What the hell, what the bloody, bloody hell do you think you’re … ?’
‘What do you think?’ growled Jarvis, wrenching away Ryder’s hands and shoving him back. ‘I’m coming with you, that’s what.’
Ryder stared in turmoil. He didn’t even know if he could trust the bastard, and he certainly didn’t want his company.
‘Why not?’ said Jarvis truculently. ‘Easier with two, isn’t it?’
He wouldn’t have a hope by himself, not dressed in grey shirt and braces, and flaunting overalls with a British double-white stripe. Ryder swore under his breath and bent down again to the sleeping soldiers, fumbling to unbutton one of the coats. ‘Grab a cap and musket and for God’s sake hurry, someone could look in here any minute.’
The soldier was stirring, and Ryder tried to be gentler with the buttons. Jarvis hadn’t moved, doubtless fuming over being given an order, but after a moment his hand came down, he lifted the cap off the second man, then hunkered down to help with the coat. The soldier opened his eyes, but Ryder quickly put the bottle to his lips, and he sucked as happily as a baby. They worked the coat and cross-belt off together, then lowered his head back on the belly of his companion. The soldier blinked, sighed contentedly and went back to sleep.
The coat was long for Jarvis, but at least it covered most of the overalls. The mutton-chop whiskers looked wrong, and his posture was far too English parade ground, but the white cross-belt looked convincing and Ryder took the other soldier’s so at least they’d match.
He glanced out into the square and saw with alarm the mob was already thinning. ‘Time to go. Back to the harbour and a boat to the North Side.’
‘No, you don’t, Trooper,’ said Jarvis. He patted down his coat, then stooped for the other musket. ‘We’ll go back the way we came.’
Ryder’s temper flared at once. ‘Not if you’re coming with me. Tag along if you want, but I’m damned if I’ll take your orders.’
Jarvis’s mouth set in a thin, hard line. ‘Listen, you cocky little bastard, I’ve seen the North Side. We did a lot of patrolling while you were malingering after the Alma, and the only soldiers crossing the Roadstead are reinforcements coming in. We try and get a boat the other way, they’ll have us as deserters.’
Ryder’s fist tightened round his musket, but what the man said made sense. ‘All right, we’ll go back to the suburb. But follow my lead and for God’s sake try and look less British or you’ll be going on your own.’
Jarvis smiled, but Ryder meant it. The NCO could keep steady and follow orders, but he’d no more initiative than poor Hoare. He was wounded in the leg, he was slow and inflexible, he was a first-class bastard and the only reason Ryder was taking him at all was that stupid sense of loyalty to a man of his own side. He ran through their route in his mind and bent to search the nearest pack.
Jarvis glared. ‘That’s stealing, Trooper, there’s no call …’
‘If we’re not in a troop ship we’ll need money for the crossing.’ He thrust a handful of coins into the pocket of his greatcoat, then snatched an empty bottle from the alley floor and passed it to Jarvis. ‘Come on, it’s quietening down out there.’
Jarvis looked at the bottle as if he didn’t know what to do with it, but at least he followed. The crowds were definitely dispersing now, probably due to the presence of a couple of mounted officers, and Ryder set off at a spanking pace back towards the harbour. The military band guided him back to the boulevard, white puffs in the sky showed the location of the steamer, and he followed the cries of the gulls. He paused twice to give the hobbling Jarvis a chance to keep up, but the sergeant-major waved angrily, said ‘Go on, go on,’ and stumped after him in obstinate defiance.
Business at the quay was winding down towards dusk, and he only saw a few soldiers crossing in skiffs to the Korabelnaya. Darkness and crowds would be better, but there might be troops looking for them already, and if anyone found those soldiers in the alley they’d also know exactly what to look for.
‘We can do it,’ he said. ‘Pretend we’re drunk and we can do it.’
Jarvis didn’t answer immediately, and Ryder felt a sligh
t qualm at the sight of him. His face was flushed except for grey patches under his eyes, and he was leaning against a column to take the weight off his injured leg.
He said more hesitantly, ‘Can you … ?’
‘Course I can,’ said Jarvis at once, straightening as if on parade. ‘Course I bloody can. Let’s –’
‘Wait.’ A group of infantrymen were weaving across to the colonnade, remnants of the victorious and drunken crowd staggering home. ‘We’ll go with this lot. If anyone’s after us, they’ll be looking for two on their own.’ He watched them start down the steps, said ‘Come on’, and held out his arm.
Jarvis blazed with outrage. ‘You keep your hands to yourself, I don’t need help from a trooper.’
Ryder kept his arm where it was. ‘Drunk and incapable, remember, Sar’nt-major?’
Jarvis took a deep, deep breath, skewered Ryder with his eyes, then took the arm. He clearly needed it, and his weight was enough to give Ryder a convincing totter of his own as they reeled together after the soldiers. They weren’t two any more, they were eight, just another bunch of drunks heading for the barracks and home.
Three boatmen at once waved for their custom, and it was easy to see why. Drunk men didn’t count money, they were shoving coins at the men and floundering into the skiffs without looking for change, and Ryder made sure to do exactly the same. Their boat was overloaded and travelled low in the water, but the closeness of the packed bodies was as reassuring as a tent, a living camouflage to carry them home. His young neighbour vomited noisily over the side and his companions jeered and slapped him with their caps, but Ryder only smiled with satisfaction. No one would want to come close to men like these.
He turned to look at the Korabelnaya looming ahead. Dusk was falling, but it was more than darkness that made the suburb look forbidding and hostile. There were no little braziers there, no traders, no music, only the giant metal-roofed dock buildings, the tall barracks behind, and beyond them the bastions and guns. For a little while they’d been in a world of lost civilization, and now they were going back to war.
Death followed Oliver out of the valley. Sally helped him down to Kadikoi, but all the way he was hearing the distant pop, pop of guns in the North Valley as the farriers shot the wounded horses. Kadikoi was different too, filled with silent and grim-faced Highlanders, while the church had been converted to a dressing station to deal with the overflow from Balaklava. It was filled with Light Brigade casualties but not one he knew by name. They were gone, all of them, Ryder and Jordan, Bolton and Fisk, Prosser and Moody, Cornet Hoare and Captain Marsh, even Jarvis was gone, and Oliver was quite alone.
He waited in the porch for his turn under the knife. It was strangely comforting there, almost English compared to everything else around him. The church smelled of incense and was decorated with luridly coloured icons, but the porch had a shabby corkboard with little notices on it, faded yellow paper with cryptic Cyrillic lettering, and a tear-off calendar that no one had changed since 13 October. He wished it really was the 13th. The bombardment hadn’t started then, Ryder hadn’t been flogged, the charge hadn’t happened, he’d still been part of an army he believed in and his friends had been alive.
The surgeon cut the ball out of his leg with the ease of a farrier removing a stone from a hoof, told him he was a lucky lad and had lost nothing worse than blood. Sally talked while she put the bandage back on, she told him all about their staff officer and how he’d been at the battle himself, but even that didn’t seem important beside everything he’d really lost.
What he needed most was the comfort of familiar things, but when he hobbled back to camp he found that too had been destroyed. Half the tents were down, some torn and trampled by the charge of the Heavies, some struck by people escaping the Cossacks, others looted by fleeing Turks. The horse-lines were pitiful, and their farrier-sergeant had tears streaming down his face as he sobbed to the quartermaster. ‘Eighty, Joe, at least eighty from the regiment! God knows how many from us all!’ Oliver tried not to think of poor Misty, the animal they’d given him to love and look after, but the feel of her nose was a memory of softness under his hand. He wondered if Bobbin would be thought worth saving or if she’d need to be destroyed with the rest.
He found his tent, but it was down and flattened and there was no one else there. He knelt to lift the canvas, but it was ridiculously heavy, and he let it drop with a defeated flump. He had his blanket, maybe he could sleep outside, but when he set a match to the scattered remnants of their firewood an NCO yelled ‘No fires, Trooper, ain’t you heard? We’ve the Russians just yards off in the redoubts, it’s no fires till further orders.’ He blew out the match and watched the glowing pinpoints of half-caught kindling fade slowly into black.
‘Polly Oliver, by all that’s holy!’ cried a voice, and Billy Jordan came limping towards him out of the gloom. ‘I was starting to think I was the only one.’
Oliver grinned with sudden happiness. ‘I thought you … I saw you go down.’
‘And stayed down,’ agreed Jordan, dumping his haversack by the cold fire and throwing himself down after it. ‘Not a horse to be had, chum, saving the five hundred trying to trample me to death. Biggest charge we’ll ever get, and I spend it hiding behind a thorn bush.’ He shook his head sadly and groped in his haversack. ‘Here, have a peppermint.’
The sweets looked rather battered, but Oliver sucked one gratefully and found the taste clean and cool. ‘Are you hurt, Billy?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. Wonky ankle, cuts and bruises, I’m the fittest man in the regiment. D’you know how many of us were at parade tonight? Ten. Ten out of, what, a hundred and fifty?’ His face seemed less fleshy than usual, as if it had tightened round his cheekbones.
Oliver tried to sound reassuring.‘There were some in hospital at Kadikoi, and there’ll be more at Balaklava. And some might be prisoners, mightn’t they?’
Jordan glanced at him curiously, then gave his arm a friendly little pat. ‘All your tent, is it, Polly? That’s rough.’
Oliver couldn’t bring himself to speak.
‘Come in with us, if you like,’ said Jordan casually. ‘There’s only me and Trotter fit, and we could use a hand to put the thing up.’
Oliver felt a bound of hope. ‘Will Mrs Jordan mind? She doesn’t really know me.’
Jordan shrugged and got to his feet. ‘Lucie’s in Balaklava, the silly cow says it’s not safe. Come on, let’s get it up while there’s still a bit of light.’
There wasn’t much even now, but Trotter pitched in to help and they worked quickly in the growing dark. It felt good swapping stories after a battle, the way he’d heard the others do after the Alma. Trotter’s was limited to, ‘Well, we got to the battery, had a bit of a fight and came out again,’ but Jordan had seen almost everything from his hiding place in the valley. He told them how Lucan had turned the Heavies round and abandoned the Lights to their fate. He told them how Cardigan had spent about a minute at the battery before riding for home. He told them everything he knew, and Oliver’s grief began to warm into anger.
‘We’d have been done if it weren’t for the Frogs,’ said Jordan, hammering in a picket peg. ‘Lovely charge they made at Russ’s battery on the Fedoukhine.’
Oliver tugged the canvas on the other side. ‘Did they get cut up like we did?’
‘Not they,’ said Jordan. ‘They did the sensible, didn’t they, went round their bleeding flank. Wish we had their generals instead of ours.’
Oliver privately agreed. ‘Why did we do it? Why did they make us do something so stupid?’
‘Ah,’ said Jordan. ‘Ask me another, will you? Look-On’s been ranting all afternoon, convinced he’s going to be blamed for the whole thing. Seems it was one great big mistake.’
‘Mistake,’ said the taciturn Trotter. He banged at his picket peg with sudden ferocity, knocking it wildly skew. ‘That’s what they call it, is it?’
Jordan relieved him at the peg. ‘It’s what Look-On sa
ys. Seems we weren’t meant to go that way at all, we were supposed to go for the redoubts, but Nolan pointed the wrong way.’
Oliver remembered that little vignette at the front of their lines, Nolan’s outstretched arm and the frozen immobility of their officers. ‘Lord Lucan should have made him explain. Oh God, Billy, you’re saying it needn’t have happened at all.’
Jordan banged down on the peg, cursed and sucked his thumb. ‘Nah, the redoubts would have been just as bad. There was that battery in the Fedoukhine, we’d still have been in range of the Don Cossacks, those guns on the Heights were all ready and waiting, and they’d a great bunch of infantry there too.’ He sucked his thumb again and looked at Oliver directly over the top. ‘And they were expecting us. The infantry on that side were standing in square, I saw them. They were expecting cavalry to come right for them, and a pretty hot reception they’d have given us if we had.’
He banged the peg again, and the sound hurt inside Oliver’s head. ‘Then why did Lord Raglan order it? Couldn’t he see what was waiting for us?’
‘Not him,’ said Jordan. He tested the peg and sat back with satisfaction. ‘He couldn’t have seen much beyond the first two redoubts, not from up there. His ADC says he only ordered it because some officer said Russ was taking away our guns.’
‘But they weren’t,’ said Oliver, desperate for something to make sense. ‘Why would Lieutenant Calthorpe say that? We’d have seen them, they weren’t.’
Jordan pointed his fingers at him like a gun. ‘Quite right, chum, they weren’t. Only a fool would have tried to drag cannon across the Woronzoff with us sitting on top of it like cats over a mousehole. Calthorpe didn’t see it, no one did, only some helpful staff officer who obviously got the whole thing wrong.’
He stood to admire their handiwork, but Oliver stayed where he was, a sick weight of certainty sinking him into the ground. ‘This staff officer. Who was he?’