Into the Valley of Death

by A L Berridge

  ‘That’s just it, ain’t it?’ said Jordan, straightening the canvas. ‘Look-On asked Calthorpe, but Calthorpe didn’t know. Nobody knows at all.’

  Oliver did. This was what they’d feared all along and Ryder had been flogged for trying to stop it. Hundreds of men had died now, all thinking they were taking part in something glorious and important, hundreds of them dead and blown in bits, their guts trailed on the North Valley, their faces eaten by vultures, dead for glory and the whole thing had been one enormous lie. The memory of it was too much, suddenly all too much, and he felt himself shaking again, deep, painful shudders that racked his chest and throat and threatened to pour out of his mouth in a wail.

  ‘Polly?’ said Jordan’s voice.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Trotter, and his hand came down on Oliver’s shoulder. ‘It’s enough and more than enough, ain’t it? I’ve seen older and bigger chaps blubbing today.’

  He was, that’s just what he was doing, he was blubbing like a silly kid. He clenched his arms round his knees and ground his teeth hard together, but tears came pouring out, his nose began to run, and suddenly none of it mattered, because his friends were dead, his dreams destroyed, and all of it had been for nothing.

  The boat bumped gently into the quay of the Korabelnaya. Ryder scrambled awkwardly over the side, waved away the offered arm of a grinning boatman, and staggered to a stack of crates to wait for Jarvis.

  This was where it would get difficult. Green-coated Ekipage patrolled the quay, two long-coated men with papers were arguing with a mounted officer, and an NCO was already bawling at two of their erstwhile companions. There was none of the main town’s party spirit here, this was military business and the sooner they were out of it the better.

  ‘What now?’ said Jarvis, coming to lean beside him. ‘Tag after the others?’

  He was actually asking. Ryder hid his surprise and said, ‘We haven’t the language to bluff it. We’ve got to keep moving, get nearer the wall and hope for an easy way out.’

  They had to find one soon. Darkness was falling, but it was also getting colder and the wind from the sea was biting. Jarvis was already hugging his greatcoat tighter round his body and Ryder suspected he was shivering. He gave the sergeant-major his arm, noted with interest the lack of objection, and lurched unsteadily away from the quay.

  It was harder than it had been in the main town. Frivolity was laughed at there, but here he felt the eyes of disapproving NCOs on their backs and expected every moment to hear a shout. Maybe they would have, but a ship was disembarking, what looked like a whole regiment tumbling out, and the distraction helped them get safely round the corner of the first building. It wasn’t the same road they’d come down, but Sebastopol was a new town and the roads were as regular and parallel as lines on a grid. If they kept on this one they’d be bound to hit the defences in the end.

  It was still a nightmare. He prayed for the sanctuary of winding lanes and alleys, but the long straight road was as barren of cover as a parade ground, and the barracks beside them merged into a single unbroken line of stark white walls. Soldiers came out to light the lamps, and they scurried on faster, staying just ahead of the yellow pools that bloomed one by one behind them. Jarvis was clearly struggling to keep up, but Ryder pushed on relentlessly until they reached the broad street that ran parallel to the grey wall. A company of soldiers was marching along it, and Ryder pressed back into the shadow of the corner while he worked out what to do.

  This stretch of wall wasn’t guarded, but it didn’t need to be, it was overlooked by the hulking shape of the Little Redan. But it was dark, there were shadowy stretches between lamps, and the bastion was watching for an invading army trying to storm in, not a couple of lone soldiers trying to slip out. There still might be a chance.

  He looked at Jarvis, then at the wall. ‘Could you climb it?’

  Jarvis hesitated, and Ryder knew he was thinking about his leg. ‘Is it worth it? The archway’s guarded on the other side.’

  ‘There’s cover in the ravine. We’ve got to get off the road, we’ll be spotted any minute.’

  Jarvis said nothing. His breath was cloudy in the freezing air.

  Distant footsteps were already echoing on the road behind them. Ryder looked round desperately, grabbed Jarvis’s arm and pulled him towards a small row of houses standing back from the Little Redan. They must have taken the brunt of the British bombardment, and were every one abandoned, fronts piled with rubble and fallen slates, walls black with holes of blown-out windows. Not much in the way of shelter, but at least it was cover.

  He hopped the low wall of the end house. The front room gaped in a frame of broken brickwork, so he simply stuck his leg over and climbed inside. Jarvis watched in mulish silence, but Ryder leaned over, took his hands, and lifted him bodily over the barrier. The wounded leg had obviously seized on him, and Ryder remembered exactly how it felt.

  Plaster and debris crunched underfoot, and tiny bright flashes were shards of a broken mirror. This must have been a nice house once. A broken-backed chair still boasted a blackened antimacassar, the silky yellow tassels soft and innocent as afternoon tea. He shut his mind to the thought of it and groped forward to the stairs, desperate for height and a decent view. The boards creaked ominously but the structure was intact and at the top was the wreck of a bedroom with a shattered window open to the night. Jarvis sat down heavily against the wall, but Ryder moved gingerly to the sill and looked out to the Little Redan and the low wall. He could see clear over it, the metalled road the other side, the entrance to the ravine and surely, surely a way out.

  ‘There were other paths, weren’t there?’ he said. ‘Not just the one to the archway. If we can clear this wall we could try them, see if they lead into the Careenage Ravine on the plateau.’

  Jarvis grunted. He was hunched over his knees and the unusual tightness round his jaw suggested he was clenching his teeth. ‘Not yet, Trooper. No rush. Not yet.’

  Ryder watched him with misgiving. Jarvis had been through the shock of the charge, his shin was cut open to the bone, he’d had to endure a long walk before his wound was dressed, Ryder had made him run, and he hadn’t had a thing to eat since the night before. The man was freezing with cold and just about done. ‘No, no rush. We can wait a bit.’

  Darkness deepened, and with it the chill. He sat and leaned against the wall, huddled into his greatcoat, and wondered what the hell he was going to do. It would take more than a little sit-down to get Jarvis over that wall, let alone through the rough terrain of a ravine. He needed food and warmth, rest, sleep and something for the pain, and until he got them he wouldn’t be capable of more than a short walk on the flat. He might manage the road they’d come by, but the gateway was guarded, so was the arch, there’d be passwords and checks, and neither of them could pass a close inspection. They didn’t even have packs.

  He pressed his hands to his head and tried to think. He could have given Jarvis a boost over the wall, he could have carried him down the ravine, but his back was raw flesh, and that was thanks to the sergeant-major himself. All of it was. If his back hadn’t been useless he’d have beaten those Cossacks. If he’d had his revolver he could have saved them all. Jarvis had brought this all on himself, and there was no reason for Ryder to be dragged down with him. If he were alone he could be over that wall in just five minutes.

  He knotted his hands and pictured it, the journey in the dark through the ravine. He could do it. There were landmarks he knew, and especially the windmill by the turning to the Light Division camp. Bloomer would be there, and Bloomer would get him home. Home was the cavalry camp, maybe Oliver would have made it safe back there. Then he thought of Sally, he pictured himself telling her he’d left her husband to die, and closed his eyes.

  The cold was becoming unbearable. This was late October, and through the gaping hole of the window the stars had that bright clarity that augured frost. He had no tent, no cloak, no blanket, only his jacket and a stiff greatcoat that seemed th
in as paper. Jarvis didn’t even have the jacket. As he lifted his head he became aware of a new sound, the desperate, helpless shivering of a man too far gone even to pretend.

  He made a face at the sky, and stood to take off his greatcoat. Jarvis was huddled almost into a ball now, and Ryder had to ease him forward before he could arrange half the coat around his shoulders, then hunch in beside him with the other half round his own. Jarvis’s elbow dug uncomfortably in his ribs, but after a moment the man relaxed a little, leaned further in and allowed the touch to bond them all the way down. Slowly and gradually the shivering subsided into the softness of breath, and over them both spread the beginnings of warmth.

  18

  26 October 1854, 6.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

  Ryder woke to the sound of church bells. He blinked confusedly at the charred bare floorboards, then became aware of other noises drifting through the shattered window: wheels, chains, and the barking of distant orders. He looked distastefully at Jarvis’s head on his shoulder, eased it back against the wall, and crawled to the window to look below.

  Frost sparkled on the road, but familiar shapes moving over it jolted him into sudden wakefulness. Cannon. Limbered field guns were clattering past, and green-uniformed artillerymen bringing them to a stop by the gateway further down. Infantry were emerging from the three-storey barracks along the road, but they weren’t for the Little Redan, they were marching to join others mustering on a distant square. It might just be a parade, but the church bells were still ringing, he remembered the incense on the soldier’s coat at the Alma, and his unease began to grow.

  The floorboards creaked as Jarvis crawled over to join him. Ryder made space at the window and looked out to see another regiment joining the muster, but these had black rather than white cross-belts, and he wondered who they were.

  ‘Odd,’ said Jarvis. ‘Marines from the Black Sea Fleet. They expecting an attack or something?’

  Not from the British. The church bells, the cannon, the mustering, the bringing in of men from the ships, everything pointed the same way, and Ryder gripped the ledge in sudden understanding. ‘No, by God, they’re coming out. The bastards are after another battle.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Jarvis, and the flesh of his jowls seemed to sag. ‘Haven’t they ever had enough?’

  Ryder was too elated to care. ‘It’s good sense. Who expects a battle the day after you’ve just had one?’

  Jarvis looked sourly at him. ‘And that makes you happy, does it?’

  Ryder grinned at him. ‘Look at those cannon. They’re going through the gate, Sar’nt-major, they’re going to march through that tunnel, and we’re going right out there with them.’

  When Sally finally left the hospital she found the cavalry had gone. Their tents were still standing, presumably to deceive the enemy in the redoubts, but the men themselves had moved nearer the Col and a picquet had to direct her how to join them.

  It was a miserable sight that greeted her. The ground was bright with frost, but men were lying huddled together like animals in the open air, their blankets lost with their dead horses, and not so much as a fire to keep them warm. Reveille was calling as she arrived, and she doubted more than half had had any sleep at all.

  She skirted tactfully round a group of officers, but stopped abruptly as a familiar voice rose angrily among them. Colonel Doherty! He must have heard the news and dragged himself from his sickbed to look after his men. His face was grey and strained but his voice sounded as strong as if he’d suffered no more than a chill.

  ‘It’s broad bloody daylight, man,’ he was shouting at an elegant ADC. ‘The Russians don’t need fires to tell them where we are. You tell his lordship from me that I’m ordering fires, and if he doesn’t like it he can damn well relieve me of my command.’

  The aide saluted and fled, and Doherty turned calmly to Lieutenant Grainger. ‘Much obliged, Lieutenant, get the wood parties out as soon as you can. Leave the butcher’s bill with me.’

  He did look very poorly still. He might be the colonel of her regiment, but he was also a man she’d nursed and she couldn’t just walk by. She waited for Grainger to leave, then bobbed a curtsey and said, ‘Forgive me, sir, but should you be out in this cold?’

  He said, ‘I should have been here yesterday,’ and she was shocked by the haunted expression in his eyes.

  She said quickly, ‘Very good, sir,’ but he blinked as if only just realizing who she was, then lifted a hand to stop her going.

  ‘I’m … very sorry to see about your husband. Do you know what you’ll do?’

  She lifted her head. ‘I’ll wait for him to come back, sir. There’ll be time to think about other things if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Quite right,’ he said approvingly. ‘Take all the time you need. You’ll always be welcome on the strength of the 13th.’

  But she’d have to take another man, and something in her squirmed away from the idea. It was what people did, it was the sensible thing, but somewhere in her mind was the memory of a young man who held her as if he loved her and kissed her as if he needed it, and after that it was hard to think of anything less.

  She said ‘Thank you, sir’, but his attention was fixed again on the casualty lists, his eyes unmoving as if they stayed on one name, and she understood quite suddenly they were both thinking of the same man. She whispered again ‘Thank you’ and crept away quietly, wondering just how well Doherty really knew Harry Ryder, and why he’d been so distressed when Syme told him of the flogging.

  But Ryder was gone too, like so many of them. Poor Cornet Hoare, who’d cried in her arms when the officers’ mess had bullied him. Poor Jake Prosser, who worried about his smallpox scars and was convinced no woman could ever love him. Poor Tommy Bolton, who’d only come to the cavalry because he’d loved the pit-ponies in his Durham mine and wanted a live beast of his own to look after. They were all gone, and it was pure selfishness in her to think only of her own loss and what she would do if her man didn’t return.

  But if Ryder does, said a voice in her head. If Ryder comes back and Jarvis doesn’t, what then?

  Then nothing. She slammed down her haversack and took out her bottle of rum. Ryder was not for her and never would be. There was gentleman in him somewhere, she’d thought so long before she saw him with Doherty. When he’d finally worked off that terrible anger of his he’d be looking to make something of himself, and the last thing he needed was to get there and find a Sally Jarvis wrapped round his neck. If she loved him she’d let him go, and she did love him, she’d known that for some time.

  She took the rum and went round the men, pouring a drop in every mug that offered. They were all her family now. And maybe somewhere only a few miles away someone would be caring for the two she loved best, nursing them, perhaps burying them, perhaps helping them both to come home.

  It was time. The first guns were already through the gateway, a column of infantry approaching down the street that crossed their window, and another waiting to turn in from the side road. Their discipline was visibly shaky too, and Ryder had watched disbelievingly as the men were first shriven by the priests, then poured full mugs of liquor from a seemingly endless supply of casks. Maybe the Russians were hoping to turn their soldiers into Light Brigade heroes.

  But drunk or not, they’d still be bound to notice a couple of soldiers nipping out of a ruined house to wriggle into the middle of them. Their only chance lay in the house’s corner position. They’d have to tag onto the end of one regimental column and hope the one following would assume the stragglers had simply joined from the other road. He’d have much preferred the anonymity of the column’s centre to the exposure of its rear, but if there was an alternative he couldn’t see it.

  He said, ‘Good luck, Sar’nt-major,’ and stuck out his hand. Jarvis hesitated, then clasped it firmly and let go.

  They walked gingerly down the creaking stairs, waited for the column passing the front to clear, then climbed quickly out of the hole in the wall. Jarvis ma
naged it unaided and Ryder began to hope he could make it yet. He leaned against the wall and watched the side column begin to file past for the turn, not one of them thinking to look left at the yard of an abandoned house. They could do it, just hop over the wall and do it, and he wondered why he felt sweat in his armpits and cold on the back of his neck.

  ‘Is my back clean?’ muttered Jarvis. ‘The coat, is it clean?’

  It was speckled with white ash from the bedroom wall, and Ryder felt heart-pumping panic as he brushed his hands frantically over the TSM’s back. ‘And mine, I never checked it, is mine?’

  He turned his back and told himself one day this would be funny, one day he’d laugh at Jarvis wiping his arse, but not now, nothing was funny now. Jarvis said, ‘That’s done it, you’re clear,’ and his voice was steadying and normal. Ryder turned and saw there was space after the men passing them, the end of the column right there.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now.’ Two strides, a hop, and he was over the wall into the openness of the road. He hurried up behind the last rank and steadied his pace to theirs, staring straight ahead, trying not to see the emptiness about him, then Jarvis appeared beside him and he was safe in the invisibility of a column. The man in front glanced round and grinned, seeing nothing more suspicious than a couple of latecomers trying to catch up. Ryder gave an embarrassed shrug and grinned back.

  They passed safely through the gateway, but behind came the tramping steps of the next column and Ryder was painfully aware of the gap between them. Hidden in the middle it wouldn’t matter, no one saw more than the head and shoulders of the man in front, but the column behind could see their backs and legs, and he felt their visibility skewer him between the shoulder-blades. They’d get away with it for now, men heading to battle had other things on their minds, but let the monotony of a march set in and someone would see they wore no packs and their trousers were grey, someone would notice and shout. He concentrated on marching in step, left-right, left-right, invisible in the uniform ranks, but as they turned down into the ravine he saw Jarvis already starting to limp.