Into the Valley of Death

by A L Berridge

  Ryder grinned at the familiar superiority and began to load as Ginger had painstakingly shown him. ‘Will it go bang, do you think?’

  Woodall’s head shot round, but then he saw what Ryder was doing and relaxed. ‘Look, stop putting me off, will you? I’m trying to fight a battle.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Ryder, and rammed the ball. ‘You and me, Woody, let’s drive those bastards back.’

  Woodall’s face lightened. He said, ‘Come on then, donkey-walloper,’ and in a few seconds Ryder planted his barrel beside him. The Russians were mostly pressed into the sides of the ravine or hiding in the brush, but then a couple broke cover to fire at their flank and Ryder pulled the trigger with an almost physical sense of release.

  ‘Reload,’ said Woodall. They started together, but the Guard was finished and shooting before Ryder had even pressed on his cap. This was his weapon and his war, he was completely at home and gave the impression of actually enjoying it.

  Ryder would have enjoyed it more with another six hundred men beside them. ‘Where’s the rest of you? The First Division, where is it?’

  ‘Aren’t any “rest”,’ said Woodall. ‘We’re just a bunch of sharpshooters caught on the hop, that’s all.’ His barrel tracked back and forth as he scoured the ground for movement. ‘But there’s a bigger column of the bastards peppering away on Shell Hill, and if we don’t hold this lot here the Second Division will be getting it from both sides.’

  Ryder remembered the vast force he and Jarvis had marched out with, and knew the Second would be hard put to resist them even without the marines in their rear. ‘We can’t hold them much longer, can we? Not with so few?’

  ‘Oh, can’t we?’ said Woodall. ‘We’ve held them two hours already, and I don’t see them breaking out, do you?’ He fired at a grey shape creeping from the brushwood and turned again to reload.

  But they were definitely getting bolder. The shooting grew more sporadic, just enough to keep them pinned down in their trench, and every few minutes a bunch would surge out to rush their position. The Guards’ officer was calling as calmly as ever ‘Breaking right! Pot that fellow, Ashton!’ and using his own pistol with devastating accuracy, but if the Russians tried a concerted dash they’d be overrun in seconds. The barrel of the Minié was growing warm to Ryder’s touch, and when he reached for another cap his fingers fumbled and dropped it.

  ‘Fiddly things, aren’t they?’ said Woodall kindly, snapping on his own with a sharp click. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got dozens.’

  So had Ryder, the tin was full of the tiny metal cylinders, but when he next turned to reload he found his cartridge pouch empty. Others seemed in the same position, he saw men patting their pockets and turning to mutter to their neighbours, a chilling reminder that they couldn’t hold much longer. He whispered, ‘Woody, have you got … ?’

  Woodall’s mouth tightened as he saw the empty pouch, but he reached at once inside his greatcoat and dug out a packet of his own. ‘Here,’ he whispered. ‘Here.’ Their fingers brushed as he passed it over, the ordinary intimacy of men who fought in the line.

  Ryder reloaded with renewed urgency. The enemy were breaking out everywhere, spreading into the brushwood right where he’d been lying, where he’d be lying still if Woodall hadn’t come for him. A shot chipped the lip of the trench, spraying earth into his face and stinging his eyes; he couldn’t even see to bloody load. More gunfire behind, a whole volley, and he swung round blindly to confront the new threat, but the shots were blasting clean over their heads, over them and into the Russians. He blinked his eyes clear and glimpsed dark green in the rocks at the mouth of the Wellway, men fanning out in skirmish order, dropping behind rocks and bushes, standing against trees, dropping on their arses and firing between their feet in Plunkett’s Position right in the open. The Rifle Brigade, the bloody beautiful Rifle Brigade was here and they were reinforced at last.

  ‘Keep firing, chaps!’ called their own captain. ‘Now we’ll jolly well show them!’

  They hardly needed to. The Russians seemed demoralized by this unexpected relief, and after a few desultory exchanges they disappeared into the cover of the ravine and began to retreat. Ryder lowered his rifle warily, expecting them to cross the open ground to join their own main force, but in the silence of their own skirmish he became aware for the first time of a different sound to the gunfire from Shell Hill. The noise seemed both louder and more distant, dominated by guns facing out towards the Russians from the front of the British Heights. Somehow the Second Division had held long enough to move their own artillery into place, and the enemy advance was stopped in its tracks.

  ‘Bloody Light Division,’ said Woodall sourly, retrieving his fallen handkerchief and whacking it back on Ryder’s head like a bad-tempered nursemaid. ‘Turning up at the last minute to take all the credit, you’d think they’d have more shame.’

  Ryder looked at him, and the horror and tension of the last twenty-four hours balled into a single tightness in his chest that could only be relieved one way. He laughed until his guts hurt and the tears were wet on his cheek, and beside him Dennis Woodall was laughing too.

  19

  26 October 1854, 4.00 p.m. to 11.00 p.m.

  The gunfire from Inkerman grew quieter and more sporadic, and Mackenzie was not sorry when the Highlanders were stood down without being called to engage. He’d have liked another crack at those Russians, but it had been the turn of other men to be heroes today, and he was growing impatient to learn what had come of his friends.

  The Light Brigade were easy to find, poor souls, wandering the plain like lost children as they retrieved their bits and pieces from the abandoned camp by the redoubts. He rejoiced at the sight of Polly Oliver alive and dragging a ten-man tent all by himself, but the laddie had a bandaged leg and red eyes, and seized Mackenzie’s hands with fingers that trembled and clenched white. ‘Ryder’s gone, Niall,’ he said. ‘Did you know that? Ryder’s gone.’ He was shivering in the afternoon sun.

  Mackenzie buried his own sorrow, and helped carry the heavy canvas to the new cavalry camp by the Col, but it was more than shelter that Oliver needed. He was twitching all the while the tent was going up, and it was all Mackenzie could do to make him sit still inside it. At last he dug out his coffee ration and said sternly ‘Relax now, will you, and let’s make us a brew. The guns have stopped, it’s over for the day.’

  Oliver groped dutifully for a mess-tin. ‘But Woodall might have been in it. And Bloomer, I haven’t seen his cart go past all day.’

  The laddie had lost half his friends the day before, it was understandable he’d no wish to lose more. ‘Ah, they’ll be grand,’ he said comfortably. ‘Woodall’s never fit enough to have been in action today, and Bloomer was born to be hanged.’

  Oliver creased his forehead. ‘I thought you said Woodall was joining the …’

  He stopped abruptly at the sound of hooves. Someone was galloping, and a voice yelled, ‘My God, look who’s back!’ Oliver hurtled at the door flap, bashing the canvas out of his way like gauze, and Mackenzie followed with a sudden hope in his heart.

  Men stood in amazement as a horse reined to a stop in front of them, its rider clad in a grey coat and the overalls of the 13th Light Dragoons. He dismounted heavily, and turned to show a face of mutton-chop whiskers and many chins.

  Oliver’s shoulders sagged. Mackenzie said casually, ‘A friend of yours, is it?’

  ‘Jarvis. He’s the man who had Ryder flogged.’

  Oh, was he now? An excited little group was following the man, and Mackenzie strolled among them for a closer inspection. A woman at a fire stood to meet them, and the blue dress and fair hair identified her at once as the lady he’d met after the Alma.

  ‘That’s Sally,’ whispered Oliver. ‘That’s Mrs Jarvis.’

  He’d not have guessed it from the brusqueness of her husband’s greeting. The man said only ‘Tea, woman’, then turned to a shabby lieutenant with a bandaged arm and a tired face. ‘Sergeant-Major Jarvis
reporting for duty, sir,’ he said, and snapped off a salute that made his whole stout little body quiver.

  Mackenzie studied him, this man who’d thought it a fine thing to flog his friend. He was swelling his chest like a pigeon as he told how he’d escaped from a whole army of Russians by stealing a horse under their noses, but he was not so very formidable at close quarters and Mackenzie decided he could take him if he’d a mind.

  ‘Any other prisoners, Sar’nt-major?’ asked the officer, producing a notebook. ‘Anyone of our regiment?’

  Oliver tensed beside him, and Mackenzie hushed his own breathing to listen.

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ said the sergeant-major importantly. ‘TSM Linkon, oh and Smith, sir, I saw them both. Private Harris I saw, Duke and McCann, but no one else. Of course we weren’t all together, it was mostly only glimpses.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ said the lieutenant, writing furiously. ‘It gives us something to write to the families.’ He closed the notebook and shoved it in his pocket. ‘Ryder’s gone, presumably? You were last seen with him.’

  Jarvis held up his head like a man at court-martial. ‘Afraid so, sir. He was a prisoner, but he got himself shot trying to escape.’

  Oliver made a stifled exclamation. The sergeant-major glanced round only briefly, but the flash of malice in his eyes made Mackenzie catch his breath. That man was a liar.

  ‘Well, can’t be helped,’ said the lieutenant, sticking his pencil behind his ear. ‘You’re wounded, Sar’nt-major? You need an orderly?’

  ‘Not me, sir,’ said Jarvis heroically. ‘Scratch in the leg, that’s all. I’ve had it patched at Kadikoi or I’d have been back here before now.’

  That at least might be true, for the hospital had been heaving when Mackenzie set out, filled with the casualties of two battles. They were still coming through now, wagons rattling down to Balaklava, but Mackenzie’s eyes brightened as the last cart turned towards the cavalry camp instead. It bore a green stripe round its body, and the redcoat driving might perhaps be Bloomer.

  Mrs Jarvis was giving her husband tea, and the lieutenant stepped tactfully back. ‘All right, Sar’nt-major, I’ll inform the colonel, and leave you with your very capable wife.’ He smiled at Mrs Jarvis and walked away.

  The sergeant-major sipped complacently, then let his eye fall on Oliver. ‘Don’t look so down in the mouth, Trooper, it’s the best thing that could have happened to you.’

  Oliver started. ‘Sar’nt-major?’

  Jarvis smiled. ‘You were shaping up a nice little soldier. Ryder was a thorough bad influence.’

  Oliver was silent. So was Mrs Jarvis. Mackenzie looked at their faces and stepped boldly forward. ‘You’ll excuse me, Sergeant-major, but if Ryder was shot might he not be still alive?’

  Jarvis looked him up and down and gave a little snort. ‘Not a chance. First shot winged him and he sobbed for mercy, but the second put him out of it, I saw it myself.’

  Another bloody lie. ‘You didn’t see him die.’

  ‘Sawnie,’ said Jarvis almost lovingly. ‘I saw his bloody brains.’

  ‘Polly!’ cried a voice behind, and there was the dead man himself, leaping off the cart as if he’d just nipped to Balaklava for more shells. ‘Told you so, didn’t I say you’d make it?’

  Ryder it was, a man who’d never cried for mercy in his life. He’d his old limp back, his head was bandaged, and his dragoon’s coat seemed to have lost every one of its buttons, but he walked through the camp as if he owned it. A trooper cried ‘Bloody hell, trouble’s back’ and he said just ‘Shut it, Telegraph’, cuffed the man affectionately, and came on.

  Everyone watched him. Behind him strolled Bloomer and the impressively bearskinned figure of Woodall, but it was Ryder people stared at, Ryder and the sergeant-major who stood rooted by his wife’s fire as if he’d never move again. The man was pale as suet, eyes shrinking to hide in the folds of his face, and the bristles on his jaw showing dark, dark blue.

  The camp hushed as Ryder approached the fire. Jarvis braced himself, but Ryder merely sidestepped him to get to his friends. ‘Niall, you old hero,’ he said, thrusting his hand into Mackenzie’s own. ‘I heard about the 93rd.’ To Oliver he said just ‘Hullo, Polly’, but he grasped both his hands and the grin split his face. Mrs Jarvis he greeted with a smile that said a wee bit more than it should, but he said only ‘Is that for me?’ and nodded hopefully towards her teapot. The sergeant-major made a little choking sound, and it was only then that Ryder paused, let his smile fade, then turned around to face him.

  Mackenzie caught his breath. This was a lowly private confronting an NCO, but Jarvis held himself stiff and upright while Ryder seemed relaxed to the point of insolence. He looked the sergeant-major up and down, gave a casually lopsided smile, and said, ‘Hullo, Jarvis, hope the horse was a good one. I picked the best I could.’

  Now that was a silence. The sergeant-major should be bellowing outrage at being addressed in such a way, but Mackenzie heard only a faint wheezing from that puffed-out barrel of a chest. Ryder waited courteously with his head on one side, and somewhere in the crowd a man laughed.

  The sergeant-major’s tongue flicked furtively over his lips. ‘Trooper. I could have sworn you’d had it.’

  ‘It’s not your fault I hadn’t,’ said Ryder. ‘Sar’nt-major.’

  Jarvis’s eyes darted from side to side. He said, ‘You watch your tone, Trooper, you watch your mouth,’ but his voice lacked authority and his shoulders were hunching like a Shetland bull’s.

  Ryder laughed. ‘Scared of what I might say?’

  Jarvis twitched. It was a tiny movement, quick suppressed, but Mackenzie heard the response all round him, clothing rustling and boots creaking, while beside him Bloomer muttered ‘Now then’ and stepped back. Mrs Jarvis’s face had turned stark white.

  Not Ryder. He looked at the sergeant-major’s frustrated fury, and a kind of light leaped into his eyes. ‘Is that it, Sar’nt-major? Do I frighten you?’

  Jarvis almost spat his answer. ‘You? A man who surrendered without so much as a scratch on him? The kind of man whose only wounds are on his back?’

  A muscle ticked in Ryder’s cheek. He moved forward, and Mackenzie took one stride to block him. ‘Come on, man, we’ve a fire, you’ll want a brew before you –’

  An arm struck across his chest and Ryder turned him a face he hardly knew. ‘Get away, Mackenzie, I’m warning you.’

  He couldn’t, the fool would get himself flogged or hanged. He stumbled back at him, but Ryder was stopped still and staring, and in the silence Mackenzie heard the voice of a woman. Mrs Jarvis had moved between them and was taking her husband’s arm.

  ‘You shouldn’t be standing, Jarvis,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re wounded, your leg’s hurt, please sit down.’ She indicated an upturned box by the fire.

  Now there was a clever woman. Ryder would never hit a seated man, no, nor a wounded one, and Mackenzie saw his shoulders subside. Jarvis grumbled ‘We’re talking, woman’, but he sat as his wife bade him and the watching men seemed to shift and relax.

  All but Ryder. The fight might be out of him but there was no mistaking the balked look on his face. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, ‘All right, I can wait. I’ll have to report to the officers anyway, won’t I?’

  There it was again, that flash of fear in the NCO’s eyes. ‘I’ll go with you.’

  Ryder smiled. ‘Why? You already know what I’m going to say.’

  Mackenzie was beginning to think he did too. Others maybe felt the same, for there was an awful lot of murmuring going on around him. He heard the words ‘Ryder’ and ‘Jarvis’ and ‘horse’.

  Jarvis sprang up and said, ‘Dismiss, damn you! By God, there’ll be some drilling tomorrow morning. Back to your business before I put the lot of you on a charge!’

  The crowd began to disperse, but they were still muttering and Mackenzie guessed the story would be all round camp in an hour. Jarvis seemed to know it too, for he sat ba
ck down with the slump of a man defeated. His very chest seemed to have shrunk inside his shirt.

  Ryder glanced down at him, then picked up Mrs Jarvis’s teapot. ‘Oh come on, Sar’nt-major, you must know I won’t tell the officers.’

  Jarvis stared, but Ryder seemed concerned only with the tea. He said, ‘May I, Sal?’ and poured without waiting for a response.

  Jarvis said hoarsely, ‘What do you mean?’

  Ryder drank back the tea in one long draught. Mackenzie watched his throat moving convulsively at every swallow and began to understand a little of what the man must have been through. He finished at last, said, ‘Bless you, Sally, I needed that,’ and turned to go.

  ‘Wait,’ said Jarvis, and his voice was little more than a croak. ‘What do you mean, you won’t tell them?’

  Ryder paused. ‘It’s between you and me, isn’t it? Do you think I’m the kind of coward who brings in the army to do his dirty work for him?’

  The sergeant-major flinched violently, but Ryder was already walking away. ‘Come on, Polly, tell me what’s going on here, then I’d better go and report.’

  Mackenzie followed them, but with an uncomfortable feeling he found hard to dismiss. No doubt the sergeant-major deserved what was done, but it seemed to the Highlander a sad blow at the natural order of things. He glanced back half regretfully, but Jarvis was staring at Ryder’s back and the sight of his expression stopped Mackenzie mid-stride. This was an NCO, an important link in the hierarchy, but he’d a look in his face that in a private soldier would surely be called murderous.

  There was no need to grovel for admission this time. Syme was emerging from Doherty’s tent as Ryder reached it, and his whoop of recognition brought the colonel himself to the entrance. He said, ‘What the devil are you yelping at, Syme?’ then saw Ryder and stopped dead.

  For one, two seconds they stared at each other. The Old Man’s face was still grey, but his shoulders were straight and his eyes held their former alertness. There was something else in them too, and Ryder had to swallow hard before he remembered to salute.