by May Woodward
‘The hilltop, dear. Should be an excellent view from there! We understand the Ninety-Third are doing sterling work holding back the Russkies all by themselves!’
‘Do join us, dear!’ said the wife. ‘It sounds marvellous!’
Above the trees ahead of Clemence curled plumes of smoke.
She went where the other people went.
She found herself on the wide, flat escarpment overlooking the valleys. From this place, an awesome view of the mountain peaks spread for miles. A steep, rocky face which looked unclimbable sloped down to the twin valleys where the action was taking place.
The wind was at its fiercest here. She had to clutch her bonnet as she steadied herself and got her bearings.
Along the cliff edge hundreds of onlookers were spreading themselves. It was just such a multitude as you might see out to enjoy the band in the park on a Sunday afternoon: lords and masters, women in bonnets, even a few children and a yapping basset hound on a leash. Up would go a great cheer, or a passionate shout, whenever something dashing happened down below.
A portly gent beckoned to the lone young woman.
‘I say, young lady, come observe this fine divertissement, do!’
The man beside him turned to look her way too. Lord Brandon Fanshawe… beneath the brim of his top hat his coppery hair was fluffing in the wind.
‘Miss Somerlee!’ Lord Fanshawe called. ‘Come… you’re missing the fight! We’ve had a deal of excitement already.’
Must she really stand next to him? She looked around to see where else she might position herself. But she couldn’t snub her big brother’s bosom bow, she didn’t suppose… Ergo she slipped into the space the two men made for her.
The girl peeped over the escarpment edge.
The high spot where she and the spectators stood was called Saupon Hill. It overlooked two valleys which a ridge known as The Causeway divided. The River Tchernaya’s waters could be made out at the head of the valleys, sparkling through the sparse greenery. Along the spine of the ridge spread a series of redoubts which had been in Turkish possession but – she gathered – were no longer.
‘Russians evicted the squawking Turkeys first thing this morning,’ Lord Fanshawe said with raised voice, one hand clutching his hat.
‘Seems Prince Menshikov got most of his army out of Sebastopol before we closed it orf, the crafty devil,’ the portly gentleman told her. She could barely hear above the din going on at the foot of the cliff. ‘Now he’s here to drive us back into the sea! Little he knows!’
Clemence viewed the battlefield. Her own ringlets were blowing across her vision.
The grey-jacketed enemy host was crossing the Causeway from the north into the south valley. They looked like a deluge the colour of smoke. What were the Russians trying to do? Break through to Balaclava to retake it?
‘Blasted, clucking Turkeys!’ growled the stout gentleman. ‘Took fright at the Russkies and scarpered, fluttering their feathers! Russkies hold the Causeway now. But just look at the Highlanders!’
There indeed were the Ninety-Third Highlanders led by Sir Colin Campbell… she’d heard precious else but their name all morning. There… all that stood between the attackers and Balaclava. The scarlet-jacketed Scots were stretched two deep along the southern side of the Causeway, firing at the force which was surging over the ridge above them. The Russian cavalry was being taken by surprise to find them there waiting.
Guarding the village of Kadikoi close by Saupon Hill they had been, someone said, when as the dawn was seeping above the mountain peaks the offensive had come.
‘Dashed into this improvised defence, the Highlanders did. The rest of our army was still chomping its morning sausages and doing up its breeches!’
‘They’ve been facing the onslaught for the last twenty minutes,’ Brandon Fanshawe shouted. ‘Good gracious! There’s another one gone down, see!’
Someone among the crowd began singing ‘Cheer, boys, cheer, for a new and happy land…’ and soon the rest were joining in.
Clemence couldn’t take her eyes off the fallen man who she could just make out through the gun smoke. Even from here, she could see the slimy redness from his chest oozing into the grass.
‘Ah, now here’s Mr Russell of The Times!’ Brandon Fanshawe went on as a gruff-looking individual in civilian attire rode by along the escarpment edge. ‘I think The Times’s idea of sending a “special war correspondent” as they call him was a marvellous one, don’t you? Gentlemen in London still abed shall not miss out! They’ll see it all as if in person through Mr Russell’s reportage!’
Hmm… the public right to know? Or the public right to graphic titivation?
The portly gentleman took out a purple fogle and mopped a face shining with sweat.
‘By Heaven, young lady,’ he bellowed. ‘I forgive those Scottish rascals what they did during the Jacobite wars. Why, they’re marvellous! Those Russky blighters will not get past this thin, red line.’
Mr Russell halted his horse, cast a glance at the gentleman, took out his reporter’s notebook, and scribbled.
Clemence shielded her eyes from the sunlight. Wave after Russian wave came against the line of defenders. Screams of the dying evaporated into the ether like sea spray.
She watched the Scots load and fire. The sound of hundreds of simultaneous gunshots set her ears ringing. What was it they said about the range of Minié rifles which most of the British regiments were using? Whatever… a bullet fired from the Russian flintlocks was much less – Czar Nicholas was paying the price for living in the last century.
Suddenly, one Highlander arched backwards so that his startled face was taking in the sky. Clemence watched his body twist forty-five degrees to his right. He crumpled to the ground, limp and floppy like the rag doll she’d used to play with when she’d dropped it. The soldier lay there twitching in spasms for about half a minute. Then moved no more.
A surge of sickness rose in her throat. She put a hand to her mouth.
The wail of a bagpipe rose above the noise. The Highlanders fired another volley.
Greenly-yellow sulphur-fog smothered the scene, blotting out the sun. Tendril-like coils of smoke crept as far as the plateau where the watchers stood, and into Clemence’s eyes, throat and nostrils.
British cavalry was by now galloping into the south valley. Sunlight glanced from the metal surfaces of rifle-barrels and bayonets. A fresh wave of Russians crossing the ridge charged downhill, yelling, to meet the newcomers. Falcons swooped, shrieked and dived overhead as if joining in the fun. A herd of gazelle was fleeing around the flank of the hill into the forest.
‘Why, it’s quite charming to watch from this vantage,’ said Lord Fanshawe as the two forces clashed in the trampled vineyards at the foot of the ridge. ‘Like watching the Lilliputians at play.’
The crack-crack-ping of gunfire, clang of striking bayonets, screams and shrill whinnies leaped from the heaving swell below. Clemence pressed her hands over her ears. But she could hear it all still.
Two riders splashed through the ditch which watered the vineyard, one in pursuit of the other. The chaser sliced his bayonet down through the other’s skull. Had she felt the impact herself, heard the man’s last cry? She took a step or two back from the escarpment edge without realising it.
She’d once hidden in the barn and witnessed two of the hands from the home-farm cut the throat of a swine… seen an arc of blood shoot forth just like that.
Down from the onlookers’ left came a clattering rumble as cannons were brought into place.
A shell shot upward, making a whizzing noise. The black projectile described one hot, scarlet arc over the battlefield, and then exploded into sparks over the area where the Russians were densest.
The unhorsed men who were scrambling up the bank of the Causeway were lit up in the white light. The dark-haired glowed violet, the b
lond tawny… each man shining out just once for an instant of stardom.
‘That shell had shrapnel in it,’ Clemence’s portly neighbour explained. ‘Sharp, lethal metal stuff which gets strewn out by the force of the explosion. Just picture one of those pumps your gardener might use to keep your lawns fresh, filled with nails instead of water! Look… see that chappy!’
Clemence watched a screaming Russian private trying to protect his face with his arms.
‘Ain’t it rousing! Moving, too. Like listening to Beethoven’s finest on a glorious summer evening, with the fireworks going off!’
‘A concert, sir?’ Clemence found her voice to utter.
‘Aye…’ came out as a blissful sigh.
A symphony, she thought. In the first movement musket oboes roared in counterpoint with rifle flutes, harp chords of clashing swords, and shells trumpeting up the scale, the adagio second movement synthesising all into a homogeny of sound.
The firing of six cannons burst into the allegro third movement. Sparks leaped into the sky. A loose shako sprang with them. The spinning helmet unfurled its plume against the wispy clouds. Back it splashed into the rivulet.
And then the violin section rose in the final movement… wails, screams, cries… leaping one above the other, until falling away into quietness.
‘By God, it stirs your blood to listen to it!’
Clemence glared askance at the man standing on her other side.
‘There are men dying out there, Fanny Fanshawe, over nothing but a modest little valley!’
‘True. I don’t forget that poignant reality, Miss Somerlee. But there is such a thing as a noble sacrifice, you know. The widows and orphans of the Battle of Balaclava may take comfort that their loss was in the cause of freedom. Here, Miss Somerlee. Take a look.’ He handed Clemence his opera glasses.
Through the magnifying lenses, she could even see the moustaches of the wounded and dying as they crawled across the valley floor… one man with blood streaming from the socket where his eye had been… mothers’ sons and children’s fathers, other sisters’ beloved brothers and other maidens’ sweethearts; a tartan kilt bright in the pile of dead; a regimental standard waving through the smoke; a rearing, injured horse… But the Russians were surely in retreat… cavalrymen, hundreds of them, scrambling back towards the Causeway.
They were like floodwaters on the ebb, sucking away the flotsam of what they had destroyed… A dead Kievan’s heel was caught in a comrade’s stirrups. The charging horse dragged the bumping encumbrance over the litter-field. The cadaver dislodged a heap of other dead which it ploughed into. It went on to smash through the remains of a shattered wagon.
Clemence’s gaze returned to the lost shako lying in the stream. The sorry helmet was snared between two large jutting stones, the gushing water tugging to free it.
The bodies of a redcoat and a greycoat swirled by, the arm of one around the other so that they seemed to dance together in a timeless ballet. The fellows’ wide-open eyes gazed into the heavens. Comrades without nations in death.
And what was all this for?
Was the Emperor Louis Bonaparte really fretting over an unbridled Russia louring over France’s possessions in Africa – or seeking his famous uncle’s glory? And would victory mean a warm welcome at the Sultan’s court in Constantinople for Lord Harry Palmerston? Or hero-worship to spring him into Downing Street?
‘Fanny! I believe one of the ordnance wagons has been hit. Look!’ the portly gentleman called.
‘Oh, pooh, just a tinderbox, sir,’ said Fanshawe. ‘Now, that is what I call an explosion!’
This second bang deadened the world. Even on the distant hilltop, Clemence could feel the ground beneath her feet throb. The Russian arsenal wagon which had been fired on roared into popping flame.
The men who had been manning it were blown airborne. Each figure was starred for a heartbeat, kicking legs and flailing arms, against an orange sky… one man sailed northwards while one of his legs headed west.
The crowd watching on Saupon Hill cheered and clapped.
‘By George! They’ve driven ‘em orf! Russkies are falling back, look, over the Causeway! Famous! Bravo the Highlanders! Bravo General Scarlett and the Heavy Brigade!’
‘What the dickens is Lucan about?’ roared the portly gentleman. ‘Look at him – sitting there as if he’s at a jaunt in Hyde Park!’
Clemence swung her glasses to see. The Earl of Lucan was in overall command of the cavalry. He was with the Light Brigade – in the north valley, away from the action. The mounted men seemed to be sitting and watching the Russians retreating over the ridge.
‘By thunder!’ went on Clemence’s neighbour. ‘The enemy is vulnerable! The Light Brigade is still fresh – could be attacking from the flank! And finish ‘em!’
‘Aye, you’re right, sir!’ said someone else. ‘Lucan’s doing nothing. Again! Know what they called him after he was so bally ineffective at the Battle of the Alma? Lord Look-on!’
‘Hah!’ The gentleman cupped his lips and barked out: ‘Lord Look-on!’ Others took up the chant, which became loud enough to carry down the cliff-face. In the valley, the earl shot the hilltop a wintry glare.
The remnants of the Russian cavalry, meanwhile, galloped to the head of the north valley. There, beyond a cypress copse on the bank of the Tchernaya, they gathered to lick their wounds. Between them and the British light cavalry, who rested in the shadow of Saupon Hill, lay a bowl of valley floor. Two barren miles of sand, scree and isolated trees stretched before them, defended on three sides by enemy ordnance.
‘Russkies are pretty dashed unassailable behind that battery,’ said Portly. ‘The Don Cossack that line of defences is called, miss,’ he told Clemence, pointing to what looked like a seven-foot-high barricade facing them at the head of the valley. ‘Got two dozen great howitzers poking out of it.’ He pursed his lips to look impressed. ‘Went and had a butchers at it, I did, yesterday evening. Scared the dickens out of me, if you’ll pardon my language, miss!’ he chuckled.
‘Really, sir?’
The morning sun grew hotter.
The girl trained her opera glasses on the scarlet, gold and blue swarm of the Eleventh Hussars. It was one of five regiments which comprised the Light Brigade. There, in the middle of the group, she picked out her brother. Her husband-to-be must be there somewhere too, but his rotund shape eluded her for the moment.
Her brother’s words of the night before came back to her. Would you believe I’m frightened? Frightened I might never come back?
Now she could see him down there with his fellow hussars, talking with a comrade, tossing back his handsome head in laughter at some jest. How young Aubrey looked, silvery in the sunlight, like the fairy folk their crazy aunt fancied dwelled in the Eardingstowe mere.
The Baronet of Eardingstowe was sitting beside the fire in the lounge of the Carlton Club, reading The Times. Rain was drumming on the window glass, and the October daylight was dim.
For the first time ever, a newspaperman was reporting from the theatre of conflict. The Times’s Mr William Howard Russell would go down in history as the first war correspondent. Russell’s eye-witness accounts would bring the nimblest of cavalry manoeuvres and doughty infantry stands into drawing-rooms and parlours a thousand miles away. Richard sipped from a cup of morning chocolate as he digested the latest from the Crimea.
Mr Russell had also had a deal to say which shocked the reading public. Arsenal and food running short; fresh supplies failing to reach the men at the front; cavalry horses not being fed; and oh! what woeful nincompoopiness in the medical corps and quartermaster’s division…
Well, Mr Russell’s reportage had brought these things before those who needed to know. Parliament was noting the shortcomings. At Westminster’s behest, a certain lady with the strange name of Florence was forming a dedicated nursing corps. The real victor
of the Crimean War would be journalism.
Not that Russell’s contribution had been entirely exemplary, however: he had mistakenly reported the fall of Sebastopol. So perhaps one should not trust everything one read in The Times.
‘Following the news from the front, old boy?’ his party colleague Sir Bertrand asked, settling into the other armchair beside the hearth. ‘My nephew’s out there with the Buffs. You any relatives fighting?’
‘Yes, one brother, and a future brother-in-law. Eleventh Hussars, both. The Earl of Cardigan’s regiment.’
‘Ah, yes I recall now! The dashing Cornet Aubrey Somerlee,’ said the other man. ‘Handsomest fellow in the regiment I’ve heard him called. Darling of all the ladies this last season! Daresay you’re damned proud of him, what?’
‘Hmmm,’ was Richard’s response. ‘What do you think of the Transport Bill, Bertie? Decided which way you’ll vote?’
He’d changed the subject, but not his mood. Aubrey getting his goat was nothing new. Probably went right back to his childhood.
Would to God you’d been the heir, Aubrey my boy… Pater had never actually said it in Richard’s hearing… but the words had lowered like the shackling heat before a thunderstorm.
What if Aubrey was struck by a Russian bayonet? The silvering scar would be his parlour-game boast fifty years from now. ‘See this, m’dears? Ivan gave it me in the Crimea back in ‘54!’ Show it to the ladies at dinner, he would. Especially if it was on the bum.
‘Don’t let me keep you from the news, old chap,’ Sir Bertrand said, gesturing to the broadsheet which lay in Richard’s lap. ‘I’m going to have a nap. Then I shan’t nod off in the House later, ha! ha!’
Richard eased out his belt a notch. Conviviality had been good this season, and his stays felt tight. As he read his ‘paper, his fancy bore him from autumnal London to the clean, blustery valley near the Black Sea.
The hoof beats of at least twenty approaching horses could be heard. Clemence wrenched her opera glasses away from the scene below. She craned her neck to see who the newcomers were.