Into the Valley of Death

by A L Berridge

  ‘Ah, ah, yes,’ said Doherty, hastily clearing his throat. ‘Well come on in, Trooper, I imagine you’re here to report.’ He turned and stalked back into the tent.

  Ryder followed through the flap and found the colonel waiting for him with outstretched hand.

  ‘Escaped, did you, boy?’ he said, shaking his hand vigorously. ‘Well done. Well done.’ He seemed reluctant to let go.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Did they tell you I was dead?’

  ‘They did,’ said Doherty, eyebrows bristling. ‘I think TSM Jarvis has some explaining to do.’ He released Ryder’s hand and stalked round to his chair.

  Ryder took a deep breath. ‘There’s no need, sir. It was a misunderstanding. I’ll tell Lieutenant Grainger.’

  Doherty looked sharply at him, then lowered himself carefully into his chair. ‘Going to deal with it yourself, hey? That the idea?’

  ‘There’s nothing to deal with, sir.’

  ‘Humph,’ said Doherty, with a hint of his old fierceness. ‘Well, keep it out of the troop, Harry. I can’t have personal feuds interfering with the regiment.’ He settled back in his chair and added soberly, ‘This one’s done quite enough damage already.’

  Ryder wondered how much he knew. ‘Sir?’

  Doherty glowered at the desk, then lifted his chin to look him square in the face. ‘I hope I needn’t tell you how damnably sorry I am, Harry. About – what happened.’ His hand moved in a vague circle, a strange gesture for something as brutal as flogging.

  He didn’t want to talk about that. ‘Not your fault, sir. You ordered me to leave it alone.’

  Doherty rubbed his hand over his face. ‘I’d still have stopped it if I’d known. Poor Marsh, not blaming him, damned awful position to be in, but I’d have stopped it if I could. I could at least have told them you meant well, that you were in earnest about this traitor.’

  The old man’s mood was sympathetic, there’d never be a better time. ‘I was wrong about the traitor.’

  Doherty looked up. ‘What’s that? What makes you … ?’

  ‘He’s not a staff officer, he’s not even British. He’s a Russian spy.’

  The colonel’s face was almost comical. He stood like a man in a dream, then shut his mouth with a snap. ‘Good God, boy, if you could convince me of that you’d give me the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a week.’

  ‘There’s one easy way to prove it, sir. Do you have the casualty returns for yesterday?’

  Doherty’s face clouded again as he picked up a sheaf of papers from his desk. ‘Dreadful, just dreadful. Incomplete, of course, but we’ll know more when the Russians name their prisoners.’

  ‘Then here’s the question, sir. Are any staff officers listed as missing?’

  Doherty lowered the papers, a startled look in his eyes. ‘That’s just the thing, Harry. Lord George has one listed as prisoner, someone must have seen one taken, but the fact is there’s none missing. Damned odd thing, Grainger commented on it too. Are you telling me … ?’

  The relief of certainty was almost shocking. ‘Yes, sir. Yes, I –’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Doherty, shooting out from behind the desk. ‘You’re done in, boy, I should have realized …’

  ‘No, sir, thank you, I’m all right.’ He blinked away the dizziness and tried to think straight. ‘I’m sure I can tell you more when I’ve talked to my friends, but we’ll need facts confirmed, and we’ll need your help.’

  ‘You’ll have it,’ said Doherty. ‘Anything you want, name it. Give me the facts and I swear we’ll act on them.’

  He hesitated. ‘My friends, sir, they’re from other regiments …’

  ‘Give me their names,’ said Doherty, returning briskly to the desk. ‘I’ll send to their COs, get permission for them to stay overnight. We need to move fast now, Harry; I want a complete report by the morning.’

  Ryder gave him the names, marvelling at the difference between reporting a Russian spy and a British traitor. ‘That’s all I need, sir.’

  Doherty laid down the pen. ‘All you’ll ask for, you mean. You deserve a lot more.’ He hesitated, then bent to a large box in a corner of the tent. ‘Here, take this for tonight. We’ll sort out something more permanent in the morning.’ He passed over a green bottle bearing the familiar label of Moët et Chandon.

  Ryder blinked at it, aware of a sudden lump in his throat. ‘There’s no need, sir.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ said Doherty and his voice sounded unusually gruff. ‘Wish I could undo it all, Harry. Now off you go, you’ve a job to do.’

  He walked out in a daze. A few hours ago he’d been hunted and desperate, as low as a man could be, and now he was strolling to meet his friends with the thanks of his colonel and a bottle of champagne. He felt himself grinning like an idiot, and didn’t give a damn who saw him.

  Dusk was falling, but a fire burned outside their tent and Woodall was making coffee. Mackenzie lounged on his back smoking his pipe, and Bloomer was making a great to-do with clinking mugs. They’d got candles too, and behind them the tent glowed with yellow light like a saint’s niche in church. The flap moved and the firelight shone on Oliver’s blond head as he came out with a little coloured box Ryder had never thought to see again. Only Polly Oliver would have ridden down the North Valley and back still carrying a pack of cards.

  ‘Oi, Tow-Row,’ said Bloomer. ‘You got another mug for Ryder? He’ll be sans kit, remember.’ Woodall threw him a mug without speaking, but a moment later he muttered ‘And it’s Woody, actually. My friends call me Woody.’ Mackenzie took the pipe out of his mouth as if to say something, then stuck it back in and just smiled.

  Ryder smiled too, enjoying the sight of them together. Bloomer was new to the group but he fitted like a piece in a puzzle and made them complete. Looking at them made it easier to forget the sour smell of a man he’d nursed last night with his own body and who today had tried to kill him. And Doherty was right, he did have to forget it. Jarvis had let personal hatred get in the way of fighting the real enemy, and Ryder mustn’t make the same mistake.

  He strolled out of the shadows and held out the bottle. ‘Little present from Colonel Doherty.’

  Four faces gaped at him, then Bloomer sprang to his feet. ‘Fizz,’ he said with respect, grasping the bottle firmly in a hairy fist. ‘Fizz, no less. This colonel, would he be the one … ?’

  ‘He would,’ said Ryder gravely. ‘He’s also arranging for you to stay tonight because he wants us to talk about our traitor.’

  Bloomer’s jaw slackened. ‘Wants? He actually wants … ?’ He gave it up and blew out his cheeks in disbelief.

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Oliver, with a new chill in his voice. ‘I’m afraid I want to talk about him too.’

  His tone sobered them. Bloomer put the champagne reluctantly aside, Woodall poured coffee, and they settled by the fire in all the solemnity of jurors sitting down to a trial.

  But Ryder’s calm shattered as he listened to Oliver’s story. The bastard had shot at Sally. He’d sprung the trap that caused the Light Brigade’s charge and the deaths of two hundred men. Raglan, Lucan, Nolan, they’d all played their part, but it was this man who’d forced the action and led Raglan to give an order which would any way destroy them. Ryder had suspected it, now he knew it, and wanted only to kill this man with his own hands.

  Oliver came to an end. ‘It’s maddening that nobody knew him,’ he said. ‘It seems so silly, but I think everyone just assumed someone else did.’

  It was Ryder’s turn. ‘Sillier than you know, Poll, since he isn’t even British at all.’

  Movement rustled round the fire as if everyone had stretched their legs at once. ‘It’s no possible,’ said Mackenzie. ‘How could a foreigner get himself so close to our leaders?’

  Ryder explained. The perfect English, the lack of security, the politeness that never asked questions, he went through it all and reminded them of the telling conversation with the Bulgar. ‘It wouldn’t be so hard, Niall. Every day, yes, soo
ner or later he’d be spotted, but he only seems to turn up when there’s a battle and everything’s in chaos.’

  Bloomer pursed his lips. ‘He’d need uniform. He’d need the full rig-out.’

  Ryder spread his hands. ‘The frock-coat’s easy, any European gentleman would have one. But a weaver hat’s uniform, it would need to be exactly right.’

  Oliver nodded. ‘Could he have got one from a prisoner?’

  ‘Not before the Alma,’ said Woodall. ‘They didn’t have any prisoners before then.’

  Mackenzie’s pipe made a little clink as it dropped against the kettle. ‘But they tried, didn’t they, Woody? You’ll mind of it, that day on the beach? Sir George Brown himself?’

  Woodall sat bolt upright. ‘Bloody hell, yes. Those Cossacks on the cliff. They went right after a staff officer and nearly got him.’

  ‘They did that,’ said Mackenzie. ‘And maybe they got something after all. He fled in such haste the hat flew off him, do you not recall?’ He made a slow see-sawing motion of his hand through the air. ‘I mind the shape of it falling to ground.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Woodall, gesturing wildly. ‘And something else, do you remember this? I sent them packing, and I said there were two of them and you said no, you thought there were three.’

  ‘So I did,’ said Mackenzie, nodding violently. ‘That’s the right of it. They had a force right in the heart of us, and when they went they left one behind.’

  They grinned at each other, then Woodall sat back with sudden self-consciousness, and Mackenzie relit his pipe. The quiet seemed even heavier than before.

  ‘Right back then,’ said Oliver wonderingly. ‘You think he joined us right at the start?’

  ‘Perfect time, Polly,’ said Ryder. ‘All that confusion, remember? Rain and dark, people separated from their units, we could have had the Tsar there and not known.’

  Oliver looked at the tents around them as if he expected to see a shadowy figure listening in the gloom. ‘But not a staff officer. We were all desperate for orders and direction, you couldn’t be a staff officer on that beach and not be besieged by people asking questions.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have to be a staff officer from the first, would he? Any kind of officer would do; we all looked alike in that rain.’ He ran his hands down his own coat and realized again how easy it was. ‘No one looks, Polly, don’t you see? Two of us marched right in with the Russians today and nobody noticed.’

  ‘Four,’ said Woodall importantly. ‘Our Captain Goodlake, him and Sergeant Ashton got cut off at the start of the fight today. They came back same as you did, right in the column of Russians, and they weren’t even in disguise.’

  Mackenzie puffed on his pipe. ‘Ah, but the coats look the same. These men on the cliffs now, they were Cossacks. Maybe a wee grey cloak on them, but the jackets were any old colour. One was green.’

  ‘He could have stolen clothes,’ said Oliver. ‘It was that night de Lacy Evans’s servant was stabbed, wasn’t it? Our officer said some things had been taken.’

  Bloomer fingered his chin. ‘A tile maybe, bits and pieces, but not a full rig-out, I’d have heard about that. He wouldn’t need it neither. We had dead ’uns everywhere, a cove could pick up a tog and kicks to fit him in no time. I had one or two off them myself.’

  Oliver looked at him in horror. ‘You robbed the dead?’

  Bloomer rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, come out the pulpit, Polly, take a gander at what Ryder’s wearing. It wasn’t for myself neither, I even give a Benjamin to one of you horseboys, didn’t I? Cove called Joe Sullivan, though I heard he rolled over not long after.’

  Ryder pictured the dead face in the rain, and something turned over inside his chest. He said, ‘What’s a Benjamin?’ and was surprised to hear his voice shake.

  Maybe Bloomer heard it too. He said simply, ‘It’s a coat. Joe was on the shallow that night, so I give him a cover-me-decent. A greatcoat.’

  He knew it. ‘He wasn’t wearing one when we found him, was he, Niall? Nothing to keep out the rain.’

  ‘I mind of it,’ said Mackenzie gently. ‘There was no coat on him then.’

  There was a little silence. Woodall cleared his throat and said, ‘Doesn’t have to have been our man, though, does it? Sullivan fell, anyone could have found him.’

  Ryder’s fingers were hurting, and he realized how tightly he was clutching his mug. ‘Joe didn’t fall. He was too strong and steady for that.’

  Oliver said hesitantly, ‘He’d been flogged though, he was –’

  ‘And so have I,’ said Ryder. ‘It was over a week since Joe was whipped and I can tell you, it’s not that bad. He didn’t fall, he went up those cliffs, someone killed him and threw him down, and that’s not a soldier looking to pick up a stray coat, that’s an enemy, the spy, the same bloody bastard it’s been all along.’

  He had to put the mug down, he was crushing the bloody thing. Useless, cheap tin.

  A hairy paw reached down to pick it up and Bloomer’s voice said, ‘Chuck us the kettle, Woody. I’ll make some more coffee against the cold.’

  ‘Aye, there’s a chill right enough,’ said Mackenzie, and his hand patted lightly on Ryder’s shoulder. ‘Shall we move in the tent now, do you think? Seeing as we’ve this grand palace all to ourselves.’

  He pulled himself together. ‘Yes – yes, it’s getting damp out here. Come on, Poll, let’s get the gear in.’

  He himself had none, but it was a ten-man tent for just five of them and compared to last night it was luxury. Oliver had arranged candles on an upturned box, but there was still a central space for them to sit round, an emptiness that became immediately suggestive. They exchanged furtive looks as grim sounds of coffee grinding began from outside.

  ‘It wouldn’t be right to go on talking without Bloomer,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Not at all,’ agreed Mackenzie, sitting up expectantly. ‘We need his opinion.’

  ‘He could be a while, though,’ said Ryder.

  Woodall clapped his hands together and rubbed them with anticipation. ‘Come on then, Polly, where are the cards?’

  It felt right for them to be playing again, everything as it was on the night they’d just talked about. The tent kept them secret as the wagon had done, and Ryder remembered the sound of the rain on the groundsheet, the sporadic shouts from the Second Division, the distant crash of the sea. They played a hand in clubs, but were only halfway through the second when Bloomer appeared at the tent flap and began to pass in their mugs.

  ‘Oh, that’s friendly, that is,’ he said, squeezing in with his own. ‘Wait till my back’s turned to get the broads out. What is it – biritch?’

  ‘It’s called “bridge”, actually,’ said Woodall with a sniff. ‘It’s a new kind of whist.’

  ‘I know what it is, you cake,’ said Bloomer, nodding at the exposed dummy hand. ‘I learned it off prisoners after the Alma. That’s biritch, that is, what some call Russian whist.’

  The cards blurred in Ryder’s hand, a slew of meaningless red and black, the letters and numbers cryptic as code. Bloomer was saying ‘no biritch, listen, say it quick and it sounds the same’, but nothing was the same because he knew now, so did Polly, so did Mackenzie, sitting still as photographs, both of them, and then Woodall shut up and knew too.

  ‘What?’ said Bloomer suspiciously. ‘What?’

  He let Oliver tell it, a story of four innocents who’d sat on a beach and let an enemy officer teach them cards. His own mind was only just facing it, what it meant and what he’d done. They were debating it now and he tried at least to listen, hoping someone had an argument to make it not true, but they were going down one after the other like skittles. No, he wasn’t a staff officer, but then he wasn’t bloody English either, he could dress as anything he pleased. He’d been wearing an officer’s cap when they first met him, but that could have been de Lacy Evans’s. He’d told them about the robbery himself, but then he’d had to, there were people hunting for him and a sergeant had even looked
under their own wagon.

  Everything fitted. The greatcoat, the timing, even the friendliness they’d liked so much. Of course he was bloody friendly, he needed their help to camouflage him from anyone looking for the rogue intruder. He’d been using them, he’d used all of them, and most of all he’d used the unspeakable fool that was himself. Even the cards at his feet seemed to mock him, the truth that had always been there and he’d never seen.

  ‘And that patrol,’ said Oliver, shock making his voice wobble. ‘The one where we were lured into an ambush. He was with us, wasn’t he, Harry? Do you think he did it on purpose?’

  Ryder remembered him talking to Doherty, giving directions, making him go on. And the village they’d watered at, that was how the Russians knew they’d found it, that was why they’d burned it the day of the march. Everything, all of it, was down to this one man.

  Mackenzie gave him a gentle kick. ‘Ah, don’t fret on it. And it’s himself who’s the fool now, thinking himself safe all this while and never an idea we’re even looking for him.’

  He had to tell them. ‘He does know, Niall. He knows because I told him.’

  Four faces turned to him as if pulled by a single string. He couldn’t look at any of them and studied his coffee as he told the whole humiliating story. He explained it, the frustration of working without officers, the need for an ally somewhere, but he couldn’t excuse it and didn’t try. He said, ‘I didn’t give names, I only said what we knew, but it was all of it and more than enough. I told him about the saddlecloth and that’s why he changed it. I even told him the bombardment was starting the next day, and the next thing we knew he was riding for Sebastopol. We thought there was a traitor in this army; well there is, and it’s me.’

  He put down the mug and waited.

  ‘The bombardment,’ said Oliver hesitantly. ‘I’ve heard people say the Russians could have seen our men cutting the embrasures the night before.’

  He couldn’t look up. ‘We believed it was the traitor when it fitted our theory and made us feel important. Are we going to change that now it’s no longer convenient?’