by May Woodward
The leader of the group wore a navy frock coat, and a black cocked hat with white and red feather plumes. One empty sleeve was tucked discreetly inside Field Marshal the Lord Raglan’s jacket.
He and the members of his staff who were with him drew in their rides close by her spot. Raglan’s gaze swept the vista of valley, batteries, river and mountain top which lay before them. He lowered his telescope. His eye fell upon the young woman among the crowd of war tourists.
‘Why, Miss Clemence Somerlee! Goodness me. How bold of you to grace us with your charming presence this day. Going to stay and watch us shatter the Corsican monster, eh, young lady?’
‘The Czar, Lord Raglan,’ sighed a weary General Airey beside him. ‘Boney’s been dead for thirty years.’
‘I know that! I but jest!’ Raglan chortled. ‘Well, Mr Mapplewell,’ he said to the portly gentleman, ‘we should be proud of doughty English misses like Clemence Somerlee, what?’
‘About ten-thirty by my timepiece, Lord Raglan,’ the gentleman replied with a beam. Airey stifled a smile.
‘Just so!’ said Raglan. ‘Ghastly ogres the Frenchies. Always said so.’ Perhaps Clemence should tell the auditory-challenged Field Marshal that he and Nicholas should sign a peace treaty. Splendid idea, what? he might reply. The power of life and death was hers!
The Field Marshal meanwhile leaned towards his general, looking disgruntled.
‘Lucan really ought to have used some initiative, you know, Airey. Could have finished them with a flank attack before they had time to scuttle into their bolthole.’
‘Suppose he was waiting for orders, sir,’ shouted his second-in-command.
‘Orders, eh? I’ll give him orders. By Heaven! Now the blackguards are swiping the guns from the redoubts!’ Raglan indicated with his overworked, surviving hand.
A Russian detachment could be made out moving along the spine of the Causeway. Four of their men were rolling out a British cannon from one of the captured fortresses. Two more followed bearing a further crate of ordnance. Raglan looked as dismayed as he must have done when he parted with his limb.
‘They’ll be parading those trophies of war in Paris before the week’s out, I’ll warrant,’ the Field Marshal said in disgust.
‘St Petersburg I think you mean, sir.’
‘Well, Airey, we can’t have this! Propaganda, what? Bad for morale. Our guns paraded before the cheering populace? It’ll look like they’ve had a resounding victory over us!’
‘Boney might have had your arm, eh, My Lord,’ Airey said, ‘but he’ll not have your artillery.’
‘By God, sir, no! Rider, please,’ Raglan snapped his fingers to the adjutants who were waiting to deliver messages. One rode forward. ‘Ah, Captain Nolan. Now’s your chance to prove your vaunted prowess. You are the best rider in the army, I hear. But then, I am deaf!’ Raglan chuckled. ‘Well, this is urgent so make haste, man.’ He summoned a scribe to dictate his message to. ‘Tell Lord Lucan the Light Brigade is to advance to the front and prevent the enemy taking away the guns. Troop horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on their left. Immediate.’
‘The cavalry, sir, is to ask the enemy to give back the guns?’
‘Now, there’s no need for sarcasm, Captain!’ The Field Marshal gave Captain Louis Edward Nolan a hard look. ‘Well? You’re an Irishman, ain’t you? So, ride like the devil was on your tail!’
Nolan saluted. He turned his horse and rode.
Clemence watched, amazed, as the officer descended the escarpment. Captain Nolan sidestepped his horse down the steep hillside, prancing aside from the streams of scree when he met them, and stepping over straggly vegetation which jutted from the rocks.
‘Good Lord! Look at that fellow ride!’ exclaimed a bystander. ‘Finest rider in the army, they say.’
Down below they had seen him, too. A group of around thirty hussars was gathered at the foot of the cliff, pointing and laughing.
‘By God, it’s Nolan! You’re wasted in the army, man. You should be in Astley’s Circus.’
The captain reached the valley floor. He wheeled his mount around once to bask in the applause from his cheering audience up above. Nolan blew them a kiss from his glove. He rode on to where the cavalry commander waited.
‘Compliments to you, My Lord. I bring a message from Lord Raglan. His Lordship says the Light Brigade is to advance on the enemy’s guns at once.’
The Earl of Lucan eyed the messenger with dislike. Damned, impertinent mick.
‘What guns, sir?’ Lucan surveyed all around him. From the floor of the valley, he did not enjoy Raglan’s Godlike viewpoint. He could not see the summit of the Causeway and its disappearing arsenal.
Nolan flung out an impatient arm.
‘There, sir, there is your enemy!’
But where was he pointing? The Causeway… or the Don Cossack Battery, and the Tchernaya at the other end of the valley, where the main Russian force had gathered after its earlier rout? No-one would ever know.
The Earl of Lucan twisted his upper body in the saddle and spied along the valley. A valley defended from both flanks by battery after battery all along its bleak length. And at the further end lay the Don Cossack; it had the firepower to wipe out entire battalions in a single firing.
The earl’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the Light Brigade, which was not yet in formation; some men were dismounted, smoking, urinating, jaw-wagging. Lucan turned his eyes to the Earl of Cardigan who was in command of the Light Brigade… a man he loathed with a passion which exceeded that which he had for every Russian and Irishman in the universe combined.
On the clifftop, Clemence lowered her opera glasses. She had observed the Earl of Lucan riding over to the Earl of Cardigan, seen a discourse which ended with Cardigan throwing his arms into the air in bemused outrage. She went on watching, not certain she could be seeing right.
‘Lord Raglan!’ Clemence called, for the Field Marshal was still close. ‘Forgive me, sir, but…’
She was not the only one who had realised something was amiss. At her side, Lord Fanshawe gave a startled cry. Mr Russell stared in astonishment, snapped open his reporter’s notebook, and began scribbling. Mr Mapplewell was rubbing his eyes and looking again.
‘Lord Raglan… is not the Light Brigade forming into lines, as if for a charge…?’
The baronet stepped out from the porch of the Carlton Club, and into Pall Mall. Rain was blowing westwards. He put up an umbrella.
From somewhere within the curling tendrils of fog which enveloped the street, a disembodied voice called out ‘hot chestnuts for sale.’ The sounds of coachmen’s cries and whip-cracks could be heard, too. This vapour, output of thousands upon thousands of chimneys, was known as a ‘London peculiar.’ It covered the city throughout the autumn and winter months. The caped and huddled figures who could be made out scurrying through the murk looked like so many stunted hobgoblins.
‘Like to share my carriage to the House, old chap?’ Sir Bertrand asked, joining him at the roadside.
‘Thank you but no, Bertie. I need to call on an infirm relation first. Don’t wish to hold you up.’
Richard was meaning to summon a cabriolet instead. Common little vehicles. But he had a mind to call at a night-house in the Haymarket instead of going to Parliament; his own carriage, with his Yew and Quatrefoils coat-of-arms painted on the door, was too indiscreet.
‘Care for dinner with Grace and me this Saturday?’
‘Thanks again, Bertie. But I’ve already accepted an invitation to Tewksbury’s country house-party.’
‘Ah!’ Sir Bertrand said with a knowing chuckle. ‘Dare one say it – seeking plumper game than just pheasant, eh?’
‘Yes, Bertie,’ Richard said, ‘Lady Amathia is to be a guest as well.’ Trust Bertie to liken a woman to stodgy food. Private portions as doughy as Mrs Dean’s Sally Lunn loaves, ind
eed?
Once his friend had taken his leave, the baronet hailed a hackney. In a low voice, he gave the Haymarket direction, and then climbed into an interior which was floored with soggy newspaper and reeking of body-odour and dog urine – the ghostly aura left behind of those who had travelled in this space before him. The cab swished out into the roadway, its wheels ploughing up rainwater.
As Bertie had speculated, Richard had decided to make the Duke of Ardenne’s daughter an offer of marriage. High connection and influence, the robes of a peer to clad a Somerlee… Amathia’s upstart father could bring them all Dickon’s way.
Making love to a dainty courtesan this evening he would be, while dreaming of the Consett fortune and patronage soon to be in his bed, in the form of an icicle-hearted woman.
What was happening out at the front right now, he wondered?
FIVE
The Light Brigade was formed up in two sections. Each was two lines deep and stretched across the mile-wide valley from the high ground on the left to the Causeway. In the vanguard – the Seventeenth Lancers, Thirteenth Light Dragoons and Eleventh Hussars. To the rear – the Queen’s Own Light Dragoons and King’s Royal Irish Hussars.
The crowd looking on from Saupon Hill waited, breathless and hushed. For a long while all that could be heard was the wind, or the jangle of a bit or harness as a horse tossed its head.
Then the wail of bugles broke out, ordering an advance. The front section raised swords and lances. The steady thud of hooves rose as it began to walk its mounts forward. Sunlight flashed from weapons’ and helmets’ steel surfaces.
At the head rode the Earl of Cardigan. He held his sword out straight before him, as if pointing the way.
‘Not to fear,’ Field Marshal Raglan announced to the company close by him on the clifftop. ‘They’re going to right-wheel shortly and assault the Causeway.’
Into a trot sprang the vanguard. Advancing behind them now was the second section. A dust-cloud churned up around the horses’ hooves and fetlocks.
Over on the rising ground at the valley-side, the men manning the closest of the Russian batteries had seen them. Figures could be picked out, moving to the fore, pointing. The first cannon-fire hit the valley, boom following light by a fragment of time.
A cry was heard. Forcing a way through the lines towards Cardigan was a lone, galloping rider.
‘Egads! That’s that Nolan fellow, the one His Lordship sent with the message!’ cried Mr Mapplewell. ‘What the deuce is he about – dashing to the front like that? After all the glory, is he?’
Captain Louis Edward Nolan’s cloak was furling out behind him like a sail, so hard was he riding.
Almost level with the leader, he yelled something. But the absurd aristocrat, sword sticking out before him just like his oft-erect member, took no heed.
At the same instant, a shell was fired from the battery. An orangey-ochre flash.
Suddenly, Nolan jerked as if he’d been yanked across the chest in a rope trap.
The man went crashing to earth, rolling many times before striking a jutting rock. Nolan twitched. And then lay still.
His riderless horse hurtled in a contrary direction, whinnying in its confusion. Three lancers had to swerve. You could almost hear their curses.
‘Dear God in his mercy!’ breathed Lord Brandon Fanshawe.
At the head of the valley meanwhile, the alarm bugles were sounding. The main body of the Czar’s army was rushing into position. Some were scrambling from the river where they had been dipping. The great guns of the Don Cossack were got into place, ready.
‘They’re not going to turn!’ cried Mr Mapplewell. ‘By Boney! They’re going to charge straight at ‘em – right through the Russian guns!’
Clemence’s fingers held the opera glasses fast. Clenched so tight that her fingers shook. My God, they’ve made a mistake. Holy Jesus, please let them realise…
The Light Brigade was now in full charge and in roaring voice.
Flashes of sunlight glanced from swords which you had to shield your eyes from. A scarlet cloak billowing, turning inside-out, streaming out like bedlinen taking an airing. A blue shako plume whose feathers were flying out behind with the wind in them. A red plume seeming to interact with it. A grey tail furling out behind. A dark bay mane jouncing beside it. A fierce and screaming face. A face of fear. A face with a handlebar moustache. A face fixed in a snarl.
A thunder of hooves went on and on and made the ears ring.
From the battery on the valley-side, a cannon was pumping out death. Its fire was purplish in colour. You could see its dark-grey nose from the hilltop, swinging to follow the first line of the charge. A flash, a boom, a flash, a boom, a flash, a boom. One man on the edge of the line crying out and falling, then three, then five or six in the centre.
A lancer threw up his arms as blood spurted from his gorge. A dragoon fell sideways. One foot was tangled in his stirrups. His charger continued galloping. The man was hauled along the valley floor. Until he was dislodged, and then kicked aside by another racing horse.
In one nanosecond, the Russians in the battery fired another volley. You could see the grey-coated men raise their musket butts in absolute synchronicity as if each was a clone of the one before him in the line. The explosion came bounding in echo to the onlookers’ place. That tingling noise rang in your ear. Like tin cans jangling against each other. Wasn’t it called something like that – tinnitus, or something like that? You could feel the tremors in the ground, too.
A hussar swerved and shielded his eyes from the earth and stone-spray which erupted from bullets striking the ground. Shrill cries and startled whinnies tore through the air. Two more dragoons perished.
A cloud of curling grey residue blanked the field.
A moment of quiet. The last of the riders had gone beyond the battery’s range. The fogginess faded.
The first of the batteries on the Causeway was now in range of the charging men. The roaring riders faced a fusillade from the other flank.
‘Cannons, cannons, everywhere they look. Left, right,’ said the reporter, Mr Russell. ‘My God! This is a valley of death!’
A man was hurtled, screaming, over his charger’s head. He lay face-down in the dust, juddering. His injured horse fell on top. It crushed him lifeless.
One shell whizzed from the Causeway, and another, and another, and a fourth. Clemence covered her ears. She could smell the sulphur now, carried to the hilltop on the wind.
The force of the explosions seized a group of men out of their saddles; one was tossed into the branches of one of the valley’s sparse trees; there he hung, swinging like a possum.
Back to the uplands on the left. The second battery had been reached. It fired its cannons. A whinnying horse reared, flinging off its rider. A lancer quivered, blood bubbling from his mouth. Tumbling sideways, he dangled upside-down over the stirrup. The horse went on charging.
Another shell arced over the battlefield leaving a white-orange tail. Just imagine the sun if it was enraged. Engorged and taking over the sky. A boiling orange-yellow heart firing out its mortiferous rays. Hey, you, earth! You’re dead!
A hussar shot shrieking out of his seat. His sword flew heavenward. Clemence shielded her eyes from the dazzle glancing from the spinning blade.
The cavalry galloped and galloped, thundering on and on deeper into the valley. Plumes of dust wedded with the artillery residue. The smoky blur was closing around the men and beasts of the Light Brigade.
Supernovae flashed and radiated from within the mist whenever a bang went off. A lone wail followed one boom; at the next – multiple screams as comrades rode into forever together; then equine cries as comrades more loyal still followed their masters.
At the head of the valley, the sound of the Don Cossack’s great guns started up. To Clemence, the howitzers sounded like the growl of dogs gone wild.
Four shells burst overhead. The toxic stars lit up a vision within the mist for a few heartbeats. An amber-ochre pit of Hell yawned before those looking on… it looked like soldiers of the damned riding through the fiery vale.
The Light Brigade was galloping straight for the Don Cossack’s maw.
The stinking sulphur cloud grew thicker. The curtain closed off the scene.
The hilltop crowd went on watching, silent and sombre. Hands were clasped over faces. Field Marshal the Lord Raglan was staring into the valley in horror.
Clemence lowered her glass; it dangled limp from her fingers.
‘Did you have a lovely morning, My Lady?’ The dull voice of her maid, Vickery, broke in upon Amathia’s thoughts. ‘A meeting with the handsome baronet perhaps?’
‘Just get on with dressing my hair, Vickery.’
Amathia cupped her hands beneath her chin and leaned her elbows on the toilet-table. She peered into the looking-glass. She took up a brooch, turning it over and over, and thought of the man who was emerging as her leading suitor.
Richard Somerlee might only be a baronet… but he was a coming man. Everyone said he’d be holding high office someday soon. His aunt was one of the richest women in Europe. And… there was something else which made him appealing to Amathia. A private smile pricked the corners of her lips. He was Fanny’s bosom bow.
She had once had her eye on her cousin Lord Brandon Fanshawe. One of the oldest families in the shire the Fanshawes were, and didn’t they know it. Amathia’s mind slipped back to a dinner-party one evening two years ago at Woodmancote, the Fanshawe seat. Brandon must have understood the fluttering eyelashes across the table, all right.
But then, as she had been leaving, and he and she had stood together on the step, Brandon had plucked her chin in his fingers, and whispered in her ear:
‘Not if you were the last woman alive, Mathy dear!’
Amathia stabbed the back of her hand with the pin of the brooch.