Hervey frowned. ‘Don’t decry gallopers; a general can’t be everywhere himself. But he was rather splendidly arrayed. How many cavalry d’ye suppose could cross the isthmus at a gallop while being enfiladed by the gunboats?’
Once again Fairbrother could only wonder at his friend’s unswerving application. He was minded of the precepts of Marcus Aurelius, of whose wisdom he had long made a study: A man’s true delight consists in doing what he was made for. ‘With you at their head?’ he asked, archly.
Getting into the trenches at the postern in the earthwork curtain of the south-west (B) redoubt was considerably more difficult than getting out of the bailey. Indeed, for all that they were but a few furlongs from the walls of the town, they might have been in a different world. Here was all alertness and edge. The laissez-passers meant nothing to the musketeer of the Azov Regiment who stood sentry at the postern (for he could not read), nor even to the corporal; and the lieutenant was uncertain (and anxious). Only the captain would admit them.
‘Qu’est-ce qui se passe? Que font les Turcs?’ (the cannonade was increasing).
Hervey put the questions so abruptly that Fairbrother expected some coolness in reply, but the captain merely smiled. He had fought as an ensign at Borodino, he explained, and lately against the Persians, and in the years between he had battled with the tribes of the marches; he did not think very highly of Turks. ‘They make a great deal of noise, Colonel; that is all.’
An old soldier – an efreytor (lance-corporal) – was boiling potatoes in a corner of the trench. He had perhaps seen even more service than the captain, and was watching the exchange – in a tongue he could hardly have recognized, let alone understood – merely as a diversion from routine. Fairbrother thought he looked curiously indifferent to any fate. It was not unlike being back with the Royal Africans.
Yet Hervey was clearly exhilarated by the experience. And when he had finished interrogating the captain he explained why: it was the first time he had been in the trenches with infantry under cannonade. Yes, he had gone forward at Badajoz, and he had joined the assault at Bhurtpore, but those were siege-works, temporary means to an end. Here, on the other hand, the infantryman had chosen his ground and intended holding it. Here the earth beneath his feet and above his head was bosom friend, whereas to Hervey as a rule it was a mere acquaintance, to be avoided by adhesion to the saddle. And the sweat of men rather than horses – it was, indeed, exhilarating.
A roundshot ricocheted from the glacis, arched over the bluejackets in the battery and crashed into the postern gabions not a dozen paces from where they stood. Fairbrother stared at the hissing ball half-buried in the sand. What if it were fused?
The captain said the Turks had fired nothing but solid shot so far. ‘We presume they intend to pound first before frightening us with shell,’ he added, and then with a wry smile, ‘But we shall not know for certain until it does not explode.’
Fairbrother frowned. ‘I confess I should not be content to sit and let them pound, nor even just to answer with artillery,’ he replied in French as impeccable as Hervey’s.
‘Ah, but we do not,’ said the captain. ‘The strelki are even at this moment making ready to attack.’
Hervey quickened. ‘Then we must see them.’
Fairbrother was wary. He had no objection to watching an attack by skirmishers, only to his friend’s propensity for action rather than observation.
But the captain looked gratified. ‘By all means, Colonel.’
The redoubt proper, in which sat the battery, was a natural, elongated mound the size of a frigate, fortified by gabions and stonework, the embrasures revetted with logs, but the surrounding trenches were dug only three feet down, with breastworks of four feet built up from trench spoil and that from the dry moat which encircled the whole redoubt. Besides the gunners, there were, said the captain, two and a half companies in the trenches – three hundred men – who would be relieved before last light by the battalion’s reserve companies from the town. Five hundred yards to the east was the slightly smaller ‘A’ Redoubt, guarding the approaches from the south and south-west and able to support ‘B’, just as ‘B’ could support ‘A’.
The trenches were wide by the usual standards, and progress was easy. Nearer the far side, closest the Turks, they were narrower, and tighter packed with strelki, who pressed their backs up against the side of the trench to let them pass, silently knuckling their foreheads, economical salutes.
‘Our best men, Colonel,’ explained the captain as they picked their way forward. ‘From the grenadier battalion.’
Fairbrother had read somewhere that Russians were not good at skirmishing, seeing no point to it when there was a mass of bayonets at hand and an unquestioning willingness to advance. But he had heard much, too, of the new Tsar’s reforms; he supposed that skirmishing must be one of them.
In an angle of the trench forming a salient they found the commanding officer, Vedeniapine, a tall, athletic-looking man about forty, in forage hat and kolet (the short tunic), chatting easily with his men and carrying the same rifle. They had met before, at Wachten’s headquarters. Fairbrother was intrigued by his manner of greeting them – an undeniable satisfaction in receiving visitors of distinction, and at the same time an air of confidence which suggested that the honour was his visitors’ as much as his own.
‘Colonel Hervey, Captain Fairbrother, we are honoured that you visit,’ he said in effortless French, albeit punctuated by cannon fire. ‘But I fear we are about to take our leave. The Turk is being impertinent, and we mean to chastise him. You may watch from here; you should have a fine view.’
‘You are going yourself, Colonel?’ asked Hervey.
‘Certainly.’
‘Then I should be privileged to accompany you.’
Fairbrother groaned, but to himself. As a rule he did not concern himself in the slightest with what others thought (indeed, it often seemed that he took perverse pride in it), but he was conscious that he acted for his friend, and had no wish to do or say anything which impaired his mission. And yet he could not for the life of him see how clambering out of this trench to ‘pepperpot’ (as the Cape Riflemen called it) in front of the Turks would be of service to the Horse Guards.
‘A word, if you please, Colonel,’ he tried, hoping the Azov’s commanding officer had no English.
Taking Hervey aside, he made his objections sound as matter-of-fact as possible so as not to betray any dissent within hearing of their host, but to no avail; his friend was clearly intent on playing the infantryman (doubtless in some effort to conclude what should be the colour of his jacket in future), and so he too must revert to his old colours.
When it was done, Hervey turned back to the Azov’s colonel and asked what exactly was his design. Vedeniapine replied that his design was straightforward: they would ‘faire une démonstration’ – make the Turks believe they were about to be attacked by a larger force, obliging them to withdraw their guns.
Fairbrother kept his counsel, though he had every suspicion that this manly colonel would not be content until he had captured at least one eagle – or whatever it was these heathen Turks paraded about with. He and Hervey would get on famously. Then he chided himself for thinking thus, for he knew that Hervey was wholly without vainglory. Nor, too, ought he to suppose that the Azov’s colonel was made of any less stern stuff; it was just that he feared his friend was no longer thinking quite as acutely as was his custom.
‘Eh bien; à cheval!’ Vedeniapine nodded to the captain along the trench who would command the strelki.
The captain saluted, signalled left and right with his hand, and sprang from the banquette onto the parapet like a gymnast.
Riflemen scrambled over the top eagerly, extending into skirmishing order without a word from an NCO, kneeling while the line formed, dressing in silence; and then on a single note of the whistle stood up and advanced with rifles at the trail. The apostles at Shorncliffe could not have found fault, said Fairbrother as
they watched from the banquette, but with a note of ‘however …’ that made Hervey frown back at him.
Undaunted, Fairbrother suggested the watching Turks, six or seven hundred yards distant, could not but be impressed too. ‘How long do you suppose it will take them to begin loading canister instead of shot?’
Hervey shrugged. ‘If the Turks are still at their guns as we close to canister range we’ll simply have to withdraw in good order, as now.’
Fairbrother sighed and resolved to say no more. It was time to become a skirmisher.
‘Allons,’ said Vedeniapine, determined to be the same, and with a hand from an orderly, as if mounting a horse, climbed onto the parapet.
Hervey likewise took Fairbrother’s hand, and in turn pulled him up.
The sixty riflemen presented a front of a hundred and fifty yards, with the captain and half a dozen junior officers and serjeants to the rear to direct them. Hervey and Fairbrother were hastening to take post either side of the colonel when Agar and Corporal Acton rejoined them.
‘Colonel Hervey, sir,’ (Agar saluting) ‘the veterinary surgeon is sick. A farrier does duty in his place. Leave to fall in, sir, please.’
Fairbrother was amused by the sudden formality – ‘leave to fall in, sir’. He supposed it must be some infantry contagion.
Hervey made the introductions (quite the strangest circumstances for presentation that Fairbrother could recall).
Colonel Vedeniapine bowed to both men (a courtesy that did not go unnoticed) before resuming his watch on the strelki.
‘What do they do?’ asked Agar as he fell in beside Fairbrother.
‘The general idea seems to be that they make a demonstration against the Turk batteries and force them to withdraw.’
‘These men alone?’
To Fairbrother’s mind, Agar’s was a commendable tone of disbelief. ‘The rest of the battalion will form line in front of the trenches so that there’s the appearance of a general attack. I think they count on the Turk being laggardly,’ he replied, sounding not wholly convinced.
The Russian battery opened up again, shot angrily tearing the air above them. Agar looked mildly startled.
Fairbrother shook his head. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. If you hear the shot it has passed.’ That much, petite guerriste or not, he could say with assurance, having been shot over by the Cape artillery.
But Hervey came to his cornet’s aid. ‘It is, however, deuced queer to be advancing on the Turks with a pair of pistols and a sabre, and no horse.’
‘You have your Deringer, I hope?’ said Fairbrother with mock earnest.
‘I have,’ replied Hervey, unabashed.
Colonel Vedeniapine looked rear to signal the waiting battalion.
Out from the trenches clambered three companies of muskets.
The strelki marched on, rifles still at the trail, dressing perfectly from the centre.
A minute passed silently, then another, and then another.
There was a flash and a roar. Six roundshot sped from the Turk battery. The first graze was a hundred yards ahead of the skirmish line, throwing up dust and stones. The rounds lofted ten feet (the ground like iron) and passed harmlessly over the line before their second impact two hundred yards behind. By the time they reached the battalion companies, bowling along the ground like balls in a skittle alley, they had lost pace and the men could sidestep them.
‘They’ve time for one more of shot, I think, and then it’ll have to be canister – or else limber up,’ said Hervey, glancing back to watch for the Russian battery’s reply.
‘Or else the entire camp stands to arms,’ suggested Fairbrother.
The problem was that the entire camp lay in dead ground: it could be observed neither from the redoubts nor from the walls of the town – nor even from the tops of the frigate west of the peninsula. There was a Cossack vidette on the shore, a furlong or so from the battery, but it had been held at a distance by the Turk pickets (Fairbrother had seen the position: there was so much scrub that any patrol was bound to get itself into trouble). The Turks might even now be forming up in column of attack. Had they been French or Prussian – or so his reading told him – they would have counter-attacked at once, and with more than mere artillery fire. So what did their caution – timidity – portend? Was it a sign, perhaps, that the Turks knew they could take their time here? Did they know something that Wachten did not? Had the offensive in the north faltered? Could they, so to speak, sit around the tree here at Siseboli and wait for the fruit to fall?
A whistle blast brought the strelki to a halt. As one man they knelt down and brought their rifles to the aim.
Fairbrother couldn’t understand the order which followed, but at three hundred yards there could be no doubting the target.
‘Fire!’
The line was at once shrouded in white smoke – a perfect volley. He tried to make out its effect, but the smoke hung stubbornly in the still air. At three hundred yards a bullet could be two feet wide of the mark, even with the rifle in good hands. And the Turk gunners were firing from behind gabions. It was all too possible that not a single round had struck home.
The strelki were back on their feet, reloaded and resuming the advance – in line, yet, not pairs, for there was no counter-fire.
Another minute, another whistle blast – another perfect volley. But even more smoke.
Fairbrother thought it strange not to cover more ground before a second volley – or perhaps the effect of the first had been prodigious?
They hastened through as the smoke of the second volley thinned and drifted.
‘Damnation!’ he said, quietly but insistently as they saw what had brought the rifles to the aim again.
‘Very tricky,’ agreed Hervey, stroking his chin with the air of a connoisseur appraising a work of art.
Fairbrother needed no schooling in la grande guerre to appreciate the danger. Two, possibly three squadrons of Turk cavalry were drawing up on the left flank of the battery. They placed the strelki on the proverbial horns of the dilemma: did they choose to stay in skirmishing order, less vulnerable to both musketry and artillery, or did they risk bunching in ‘close order’ to fend off the lancers?
He looked back towards the Azov’s muskets. They were shouldering arms.
Hervey saw too. ‘I trust they’ll stand their ground.’
Fairbrother said nothing; he thought that rather too much had been left to trust already.
Seconds later they had their answer: the line of muskets advanced.
‘Admirable initiative,’ said Hervey.
‘Do you know, sir, that there’s no word in Russian for “initiative”?’
‘Thank you, Mr Agar. Later, if you will.’
Fairbrother smiled. There seemed little else to do.
The Russian battery spoke – four rounds, in sequence rather than volley. And explosive shell instead of solid shot.
Two burst in the air, the other two – by Fairbrother’s estimation – a little long. He saw several lancers tumble. If the gunners corrected well they’d draw much blood. ‘What now, Hervey?’
The captain of the strelki turned to ask the same of Vedeniapine. The colonel raised his right arm and made a leisurely circling movement.
Three short whistle blasts. Half the line rose by alternate men and began doubling rear while the other half remained kneeling, rifle butts to the ground.
‘Here they come, sir,’ said Corporal Acton, first to detect the Turk movement. ‘At the trot.’
The captain of strelki had seen them, too. Up went the rifles into the aim, and the line volleyed as one.
Three short whistle blasts again. The line rose without reloading and began doubling back to where the other half-company had formed.
Another volley as they cleared the line of fire tumbled several more Turks – at three hundred yards. Very passable shooting, reckoned Fairbrother.
But even if every round of the next volley found its mark it could scarcely be enough to ha
lt the sipahis.
The captain knew it too. Rapid whistle blasts transformed the extended line into a daisy-chain of riflemen in tight bunches, four or five standing back to back, bayonets (‘swords’) fixed.
Colonel Vedeniapine beckoned Hervey and the others to the nearest. The riflemen greeted them with much saluting and grinning.
They drew sabres.
‘Like a square at Waterloo?’ suggested Fairbrother, wryly. It looked as if they would have a fight of it again.
Hervey would not rise to the fly. ‘Smart work to be sure. Exactly from the book. They evidently have trust in the supports.’
The battalion companies were indeed still advancing.
‘Have you space to parry, Corporal Acton?’ he asked blithely, turning to his coverman.
‘Sir, I ’aven’t space to salute if the Sultan ’imself rides up, let alone parry.’
Hervey smiled. ‘If the Sultan himself rides up then Mr Agar shall explain to him we are here to observe and not to fight.’
‘Knew there was nought to worry about, sir,’ replied Acton, happy enough to share the joke.
Fairbrother said nothing – though if ever he were minded to write a memoir of his association with his friend, this exchange would have its place.
The battalion companies, two hundred yards rear, halted and began throwing out flanks. Whatever else happened, it was plain to him that the Turk cavalry would not be able to shift these, covered by the battery in the redoubt. The strelki could therefore chance a dash to safety behind them.
‘Couldn’t they have advanced another hundred yards though?’
Hervey agreed with the sentiment, but as his friend must know, the evolutions of a line of infantrymen in close order were not to be compared with those of a troop of dragoons, he said. Even a troop could take an inordinate time at the beginning of the drill season.
And as if to prove his point, only now, with the Turks getting into a gallop, did the Azov’s major give the order to the companies, ‘Front rank, kneel!’
Hervey took one of the pistols from his belt and ported it defiantly. Fairbrother and the others followed.
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