The Valley of Death

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ‘The smoke from that chimney is foul,’ she declared.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, ‘but we gentlemen have no place to which we may retire for our brandy and cigars after dinner. You should be pleased. It keeps the insects away.’

  ‘I would rather use my perfume to do that,’ she replied. ‘They seem to be repelled by this particular sort.’

  He shrugged but continued to smoke his pipe. It was unsatisfying. He needed something else. Suddenly the feeling was intense. A kind of jolt, a powerful streak of yearning ran through his body and was impossible to ignore. Shaking violently, he tapped out his pipe bowl on the floor, the red-hot ashes tumbling on to the boards and smouldering there. He poured some water from a mug on to the tiny fire. Then he cleared his throat to try to gain control of the treble he knew would sound in his voice when he spoke again.

  ‘Lavinia, I’m – I’m in pain again.’

  She looked at him through the blue haze of smoke and shook her head in a definite fashion.

  ‘No, Alexander, you are not in pain.’

  But the craving was growing in intensity, so that it was impossible to ignore. He was caught in an obsession, and helpless to control it. His mind had one thought and that was to satisfy the urgent need which his body signalled to his brain. Though he was actually disgusted with himself, he continued to plead with her.

  ‘Lavinia, what would you ask of me?’

  ‘How I would have loved to have heard those words at some other time, but the answer is still no, Alexander. We have to wean you off the laudanum. You are becoming too dependent, like some ancient dowager with the gout, except that it matters in your case because dowagers are old and have little left to look forward to, but you are young and have a life ahead of you. You may have some at precisely ten of the clock and no sooner.’

  ‘You are beyond everything, Mrs Durham,’ he gasped, hating her at this moment. ‘I should like to strangle you.’

  ‘My dear Alex, you have wanted to throttle me so many times in our lives. I do believe I bear the ghostly marks of your fingers on my neck. Fortunately, you are too weak at the moment, despite the fact that you are mending tolerably well. Perhaps you will hate me less once the craving for the opium wears off. Did you know that poor little Chinamen are dying of too much opium and all because we British want to trade for porcelain and rhubarb?’

  ‘I’m not interested in blasted Chinamen or their rhubarb,’ snarled Crossman. ‘I need my laudanum.’

  ‘No you do not. You only think you do. I gave you the laudanum to ease your pain. Is it my fault that at one time you have indulged in opium?’

  He turned his face to the wall. ‘I didn’t indulge,’ he said. ‘It was necessary to me at the time.’

  ‘You became an addict.’

  ‘I wish I had never told you. The circumstances – look, Lavinia, I broke it before, I will break it again.’

  ‘You certainly will. I intend for you to break it now. You will wait until ten o’clock.’

  ‘Blast and damn you.’

  ‘Yes, Alex, blast and damn me. There, I have sworn an oath. Does that shock you? I think it shocks me.’

  ‘Nothing shocks you, Lavinia.’

  At that moment there was a shadow in the doorway and Crossman looked up, expecting to see Lovelace. Instead it was a harrowed-looking Rupert Jarrard. He seemed a little embarrassed by the exchange he had heard and turned to go.

  ‘Rupert!’ cried Crossman, desperate for some distraction. ‘Do come in. Please, come in. Don’t leave me with this harridan.’

  It was Jarrard’s turn to be shocked.

  ‘Jack, how can you be so insulting to this lady? As I understand it, she has cared for you night and day. You should be eternally grateful.’

  Crossman said hollowly, ‘That shows how much you know about it all. She is torturing me, Rupert. She delights in cruelly tormenting me. It is revenge for imagined past wrongs. She has me at her mercy and is inflicting pain and misery upon me in my helpless condition. She is a harpy.’

  Jarrard looked at Mrs Durham, who said, ‘I won’t let him have his opium.’

  Jarrard nodded grimly. Stepping into the room he said to Crossman, ‘Jack, you must get a hold of yourself. Mrs Durham is only doing what we all know is best.’

  ‘A conspiracy,’ groaned Crossman. ‘You all hate me.’

  ‘Don’t be childish. Look, I’ve come to talk to you for a while.’

  ‘Your French paramour is on duty, I suppose?’ replied Crossman, waspishly.

  ‘Now that’s not fair, Jack, I’ve been very busy. There’s a lot going on at the front. If you weren’t so selfish you’d stop and think that men are dying out there.’

  Crossman stared at his friend and suddenly felt remorse for his bad behaviour.

  He groaned. ‘I’m sorry. Talk to me, Rupert. Take my mind off-things.’

  Jarrard sat down after removing his Navy Colt and placing it carefully on the table. Then they talked about engineering, about the latest inventions, about discoveries in medicine, about farming, about anything and everything to do with ‘science’.

  Jarrard pronounced it ridiculous that an Englishman was expected to wear special clothes to go bicycling, or fell-walking, or digging for fossils. Mrs Durham intervened here and heatedly disagreed with the American. They argued about the subject, with Crossman merely listening in.

  ‘Of course it’s essential that a man is correctly dressed and wears the appropriate clothes for the pursuit he is undertaking,’ she said. ‘How otherwise are standards to be kept? A man will be coming down to dinner in his gardening jacket otherwise, and then where would we be?’

  ‘My father eats his dinner in the same clothes that he wears to work,’ said Jarrard through his teeth. ‘You people are desperate snobs, if you ask me—’

  ‘Not at all, Rupert,’ interrupted Crossman. ‘It is simply a matter of good breeding. Etiquette to the British is as important as freedom to an American. If we had a Declaration of Independence – quite unnecessary of course because we have never been dependent – it might say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But it would also record, “Additional to these is the expectation that all men will respect that it is their duty to appear dressed correctly for dinner, no matter what their class, country or creed.” ’

  Jarrard laughed.

  Mrs Durham said, ‘You are so stupid sometimes, Sergeant Crossman.’

  Crossman was grateful she kept his secret in front of others – apart from that slip in front of Devlin, which he hoped she had covered – only calling him ‘Alexander’ when they were alone together.

  ‘I know, Mrs Durham. It will be the death of me.’

  At that moment another man entered the room, dressed in the colourful costume of a Bashi-Bazouk, with a floppy Santa Claus hat, various shirts and waistcoats of ethnic design piled one on the other, baggy pantaloons, leggings and soiled boots. He had with him a sun-darkened woman wearing flowing cottons covered by an open goathair robe. Her breasts were bare to view and thrusting through a long smock which was undone to the waist and trailed ties. It was a natural state for one of her tribe. She smiled shyly at the men and Mrs Durham. Jarrard came to attention and nodded curtly but politely.

  ‘Ali!’ cried Crossman, delighted at another distraction as the opium pangs gnawed at his insides. ‘What have we here?’

  The Bashi-Bazouk came forward with a half-dozen quail in his right hand. His female companion stayed in the shadows by the doorway.

  ‘I bring these,’ he said. ‘For the woman to cook.’

  ‘A Turk bearing gifts,’ Crossman said, shaking his head. ‘Do you think we should accept them, Rupert?’ He smiled at Ali. ‘Of course we do. A little joke. Thank you my friend, the woman will be delighted to cook them.’

  ‘You see what I mean?’ said Mrs Durham, her hands fl
uttering. ‘Falling standards. No doubt this Turkish gentleman here wears these same gaudy garments at dinner and he is teaching our young men to do the same.’

  ‘Our young men have but one uniform,’ said Crossman, ‘and that is what they stand up in. They eat, sleep and kill in the same clothes. That is not their fault. Now, woman, be so good as to pluck these birds and put them in a boiling pot of water.’

  Mrs Durham took the quail with a little laugh. She had enjoyed the banter, not believing half of what she had been arguing for herself. Lord Cardigan had an extensive wardrobe here in the Crimea, but most of the officers had only a single threadbare uniform, and many lived and died in the same conditions as the private soldiers, suffering the same privations. It was a new, enlightening experience for them, and they came to value the character of their men to a much deeper degree than ever before.

  ‘I shall do my best with them,’ she remarked. ‘Though I don’t believe I have plucked a bird before in my life. You must show me what to do, Mr Jarrard. I understand from Sergeant Crossman you have been a frontiersman, a pathfinder such as one might read about in one of Mr James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-stocking Tales.’

  ‘I travelled the Oregon trail, ma’am,’ admitted the correspondent, ‘and am considered a pioneer amongst my friends and acquaintances.’

  ‘Then you will know how to pluck a turkey, which I’m sure is much the same as a quail only a larger task.’

  Jarrard picked up his Colt and the pair of them left the room, going below where there were the rudiments of a kitchen. The Tartar woman remained by the doorway. Ali stayed with Crossman, staring at the sergeant, presumably trying to gauge whether he was getting better. Crossman was disconcerted to notice that Mrs Durham had taken the bottle of laudanum with her, so he could not ask Ali to give him some. He wondered if he could persuade Ali to get some for him from somewhere and bring it to him later.

  ‘You are an excellent shot, Ali,’ he said to the rotund but hard-looking man standing by his side. ‘I still don’t know how you manage to shoot a quail with a large-bore rifle and not blast it to pieces.’

  ‘I am good shot,’ smiled Ali, agreeing.

  Suddenly Crossman stared at the rifle in the Bashi-Bazouk’s hand, recognizing it first by the leaf back-sight, then noticing other familiar features.

  ‘Ali?’ he said. ‘That’s a Ferguson rifle, damn you.’

  Ali glanced down at his weapon as if it had just appeared in his hands by magic. He shrugged.

  ‘Damn you, man,’ cried Crossman. ‘You kept one of the breach-loaders. Don’t you know I’m suspected of allowing that weapon to fall into Russian hands? That, or worse. Dalton-James will have me hanged for it.’

  Ali shrugged again. ‘I kill bear for this gun,’ he said ‘It is mine by right.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Ali proclaimed in a definite tone. ‘It is mine.’

  Crossman sighed and lay back, then laughed. ‘Oh, keep the damn thing, but don’t let Lieutenant Dalton-James see you with it. Thank you for the birds, Ali. You are an excellent man as well as a good shot. You can come to my dinner table dressed as you like, whenever you like. Do you understand?’

  Ali grinned. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. How have you managed to get ammunition for the Ferguson?’

  ‘I make it.’

  Crossman had forgotten about the resourcefulness of poor Eastern peoples. To make ammunition for this rifle Ali would have created his own mould for the bullets. In fact, he had probably improved upon the weapon since it had been in his hands.

  Ali stayed for a while, talking awkwardly with Crossman, then signalled to his companion that they should leave. She smiled once at Crossman. On seeing her bared breasts he felt a stirring in his loins. By the time Mrs Durham came back up to him, the laudanum cravings were on him again. He desperately needed a distraction. There seemed to him to be one on offer, of which so far he had declined to take advantage.

  ‘Lavinia,’ he said huskily. ‘I’m cold.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘You want another blanket?’

  ‘No.’

  She stared hard at him and then smiled.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, and began to undress.

  When they were making love, just a few minutes later, she said to him in a faraway voice, ‘I never thought you would, Alexander. You’re such a prig, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ he sighed above her, as her body warmed his, ‘it’s such a bore.’

  15

  The dawn had still not yet arrived, but he and Mrs Durham were up and dressed, ready for the new day.

  ‘Am I really a prig?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes, you are sometimes, Alex. A prig and a prude. Other people don’t welcome self-righteous condemnation from their peers. Ladies especially like a little bit of wickedness in a man. Not too much, though. Just enough to make them feel wicked themselves for fostering the relationship.’

  Crossman shook his head. ‘Very strange,’ he said. ‘But I have taken advantage of another man’s wife. I should be disgusted with myself.’

  The lady snorted. ‘Bertie is my husband in name only. He – I shouldn’t be telling you this – he does not make love to me, Alex, at least not often. Once every half-year perhaps. There’s nothing physically wrong with him. He’s just one of those men who have muted desires.’

  ‘He’s still your husband,’ Crossman pointed out. ‘And I should not have—’

  ‘We – we should not have – and yes, or course we should have. We were in love once, you know.’

  ‘That doesn’t give us the right to deceive your husband, nor do I want to discuss your married life. I think this conversation has gone as far as I want it to go.’

  ‘But it was you who raised the subject in the first place.’

  Suddenly there were explosions outside, mounting in volume. Crossman peered out of the small window through which the Cossack had come to kill him not long ago. He could see nothing, however, since it was still very dark.

  ‘That’s not the guns around Sebastopol,’ he said. ‘Those are much closer. That’s coming from the other side of the gorge.’

  ‘Are they our guns, do you think?’ asked Mrs Durham, in a perfectly calm voice.

  ‘I would say they are in our redoubts.’

  ‘Is it a battle?’

  The sound of ‘Boots and Saddle’ came to them now, from the cavalry brigades in the north-west.

  Crossman said, ‘Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. If it is an attack I hope the French are not feeling too peeved with us. We shall all need to pull together.’

  He could see the flashes of the guns now, on the distant ridge. They were like ephemeral stars, there and gone. Rifle fire now sounded and distant drums and trumpets mingled with the closer sound of the bagpipes. These were all soon drowned by the noise of the guns on a rise in the South Valley just below the Causeway Heights which the allies called Canrobert’s Hill.

  ‘The Turks have opened fire.’ Crossman said. ‘That must mean the Russian army is close.’

  At that moment there was a commotion outside and someone came bounding up the stairs. Crossman, sitting in a chair, was astonished to see Jock McIntyre, the sergeant-major from the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders, in the doorway. McIntyre peered into the room, getting his eyes used to the gloom, then saw Crossman in the chair.

  ‘Jack Crossman,’ he said. ‘Are ye well?’

  ‘I have not been,’ said Crossman. ‘But I’m close to being fit again.’

  ‘Quick, man, we need ye,’ said the sergeant-major. ‘They’re getting all the invalids from the hospitals. The Russians are coming across the valley with their cavalry. There’s only us to stop them.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘The 93rd Foot. Sir Colin Campbell has marines further up, but we’re all that stands between the Russian army and Balaclava.’

  Crossman got to his feet, a little unsteadily, but once he h
ad his Minié in his hand he used it as a crutch.

  Mrs Durham cried, ‘I must find a horse!’ and rushed from the room, her eyes shining.

  ‘Are ye well enough, man?’ asked McIntyre. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing that a good row won’t cure, one way or the other,’ said Crossman. ‘Let’s go to it.’

  When they got outside the guns were pounding out regular rhythms. A soldier in a kilt came running up to McIntyre.

  ‘Sir, a rider has just arrived with a message for Colonel Ainslie from Lord Raglan. We’re to hold on. The 1st and 4th Divisions are to assist us when they reach us.’

  McIntyre huffed. ‘If they reach us in time.’

  ‘What do you mean, Jock?’ asked Crossman. ‘You sound as if you know something I do not.’

  ‘The 4th are under General Cathcart, ye ken? Sir George is none too happy wi’ Lord Raglan, for not immediately attacking Sebastopol after the flank march.’

  ‘Surely he wouldn’t disobey an order?’ questioned Crossman. ‘He’s not that stupid.’

  ‘No, but the man has a lot of power. He’s next in line for command after Lord Raglan. I wouldna be surprised if he disna stay put for a while to show people how angry he is that Lord Raglan listened to General Brown instead o’ him. The 4th will be rarin’ to go, of course, seeing as how they didna take part in the big bash at the Alma. It all depends on whether General Cathcart lets them off the leash.’

  The two men made their way to where the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders were stretched in a long line, two deep, across the mouth of the gorge which led to Balaclava harbour. Crossman, aware that he looked ravaged and thin, did not expect to be recognized by either his brother or his father, both totally unaware of his presence in the Crimea, and now close enough to hit with a pebble. Crossman found it strange to be standing in the same line with them, waiting to die under the hooves of Russian horses. Nevertheless he edged away from where his brother stood, wanting still to remain unknown to them. His father, being a major, was on a horse. Major Kirk rarely looked down into the faces of the men and if he did it was a general scanning of the line to see that it was straight.