by V. A. Stuart
“Advance very steadily,” Lord Lucan instructed. “And keep your men well in hand.”
There was the same coldly formal acknowledgement. Murmuring cynically to himself, “Well, here goes the last of the Brudenells!” the Earl of Cardigan wheeled his great chestnut charger and went back to mount his men, his orders given with admirable calm and obeyed as calmly.
The five splendid regiments of the Light Cavalry Brigade rode, with unparalleled gallantry, to their doom, in three lines, their commander at their head and, with poetic justice, the first to meet his death in the terrible, mile-long charge was Edward Nolan, riding with the 17th Lancers… .
2
Phillip was watching the headlong descent of General Airey’s aide-de-camp through his Dollond when a galloper—who had taken the more usual route from the Sapouné Ridge—pulled his sweating horse to a standstill and gave a written despatch to one of Sir Colin Campbell’s aides. Sir Colin read it, frowning, and then motioned Phillip to his side.
“The time has come for you to request the Captain of the Sanspareil to bring her into the harbour, Mr Hazard,” he said. “I should be obliged if you would do so. This”—he indicated the message he had just read—“is from your Admiral. He tells me, in confidence, that there is … how shall I put it? A risk that more heed may, perhaps, be paid to panic counsels than the situation here warrants. Should these have reached the commander of the harbour—Captain Tatham, is it not?—the Admiral considers it advisable that they should be firmly contradicted, from whatever source or in whatever form they may have reached him. This will be your task … do you understand?”
“I think so, sir. That is …” Phillip hesitated, puzzled by the manner in which his instructions had been given. Sir Colin did not, as a rule, mince words; he issued his instructions clearly and precisely, without prevarication. But of course, if orders had been sent to Captain Tatham from Lord Raglan’s headquarters, neither Admiral Lyons nor Sir Colin Campbell could countermand them, however little they might approve of the measures which had been ordered. Panic counsels suggested that an order to abandon Balaclava Harbour might have been issued and, aware that the Admiral was as determined to hold the harbour as the commander of Balaclava’s defenses, Phillip smiled suddenly. He understood now what was required of him and why, with his usual foresight, Admiral Lyons had sent him ashore to act as naval liaison officer. “You mean, sir, that I am to contradict any such—such rumours firmly?”
“But with discretion, Mr Hazard,” Sir Colin qualified. “You can testify to the fact that the position here is still secure and, I believe, likely for the present to remain so.”
“Yes, indeed sir,” Phillip answered readily.
Sir Colin echoed his smile, a gleam in his tired eyes. “And the harbour will not be abandoned, if I can prevent it—your Admiral and I are of one mind in this matter. The remaining regiments of my Highland Brigade will soon reach the Plain. I imagine that the aide-de-camp we have just seen, descending in such haste from Lord Raglan’s command post, bears orders for an attack aimed at the recovery of our lost redoubts. Should this be successful and if I am permitted to keep all three Highland regiments here, then I am confident that panic measures, so far as the harbour is concerned, would be a grave error at this time.”
“I understand, sir. Am I at liberty to repeat what you have told me to Captain Tatham?”
“As a chance remark you overheard—certainly, Mr Hazard, if you find it necessary. But”—the Highland Brigade commander’s smile widened—“not, perhaps, as my official opinion. Although you have, of course, your Admiral’s authority, as well as mine, to order the Sanspareil into harbour as soon as a pas-sage can be cleared for her—before nightfall, if possible. Leave your galloper here, in case I require to make contact with you before your return.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Phillip acknowledged. He did not spare the Admiral’s bay and, although occasionally impeded by ammunition parties, made remarkably good time on his journey back to the harbour. Here he found, as Sir Colin’s instructions had led him to expect, that frantic efforts were being made to clear the harbour of shipping. When he ran Captain Tatham to earth on the Ordnance Wharf, his news was greeted with relief. An aide-de-camp had brought an order signed by General Airey, the Captain of the Simoom told him, soon after the fleeing Turkish auxiliaries had reached Balaclava, clamoring to be taken aboard ship and conveyed to the safety of Constantinople.
“They told us the battle was lost and that the Russians would be upon us within half an hour,” Tatham said. “I’m afraid, however, that we dealt with them somewhat unsympathetically. I lined up a party of bluejackets and threatened to shoot them like dogs if they did not return to their posts. The mid. in charge was a proper young fire-eater and he put the fear of God into the lot of them!” He chuckled reminiscently and then sighed. “But when General Airey’s aide made his appearance, with orders to load what stores and ammunition I could and get the transports to sea, I began to fear that the Turks might have been right, after all. Tell me—what is happening, Hazard? We’ve been starved of reliable news down here. All we’ve heard are wild rumours and almost incessant gunfire.”
Phillip gave him a brief account of the progress of the battle and then returned to the subject of the Sanspareil.
“Well, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” Captain Tatham returned wryly. “I’ll send a boat out to her at once. Within the next hour or so—thanks to General Airey—we shall have the harbour clear enough for her to steam straight into her anchorage. And no one will welcome her more warmly than I shall, I can tell you! Captain Dacres will, of course, become senior officer and assume my responsibilities and he cannot do so too soon to please me.” He paused, eyeing Phillip searchingly, and then asked, “Do you wish to go out in the boat, Mr Hazard?”
“I think not, sir. My orders are to attend Sir Colin Campbell. When I left the 93rd’s position, there appeared to be a possibility that the Duke of Cambridge’s division was about to make a counterattack on the Causeway Heights. I am anxious to see whether it has succeeded.”
“You are lucky devils, you amateur soldiers!” Captain Tatham asserted, with mock envy. “Judging by the volume of gunfire, the attack is probably already taking place … though it sounds more distant than it did earlier and our Marine guns are silent.”
He was right, Phillip thought, as they both listened for a moment or two to the far-off thunder of guns. But he offered no comment and, after asking a few more questions concerning the battle, Captain Tatham held out his hand.
“Well, I won’t detain you from your grandstand seat any longer. I can understand your eagerness to return to it and, were I in your place, I should feel as you do, I expect. In any case, I’m grateful to you for saving me a great deal of unnecessary work. I can now concentrate on supplying the seemingly insatiable demands of the ammunition parties, instead of loading all the shot and shell they need into ships and sending them out to sea—which, I must confess, Hazard, has gone sorely against the grain. But in the light of my orders …” He shrugged and passed a hand wearily across his sweat-damp brow. “I was keeping our steam frigates here, with guns manned, as I expect you noticed, so as to make a fight of it, if we had to.”
“Yes, sir.” Phillip permitted himself a faint smile. “I had noticed that.”
The Simoom’s commander repeated his sigh. “And they have adequate reserves of ammunition, perhaps needless to add. Admiral Lyons, when I spoke to him earlier this morning, seemed quite determined that we should not abandon Balaclava but, I imagine, if Lord Raglan—” He hesitated, looking enquiringly at Phillip and plainly seeking reassurance. “What of Sir Colin Campbell, Hazard?”
“Sir Colin, judging by a conversation I overheard before I left Kadi-Koi, is of precisely the same mind as the Admiral, sir,” Phillip told him. “And he endorsed the order to bring in the Sanspareil. In fact, sir, he said—” He was interrupted by the sound of galloping hooves and a voice calling his name. “Sir! Lieutenant Haz
ard, sir!” He turned, startled, as the young 8th Hussars trooper whom, on Sir Colin Campbell’s instructions, he had left at Kadi-Koi, jerked his horse to a standstill beside him, almost bringing the lathered animal to its knees as he flung himself from the saddle. The man was white-faced, so distressed and agitated that the first words he blurted out were well nigh incomprehensible.
“Steady, lad!” Phillip put out a hand to grip his arm. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“The naval stretcher parties, sir … I was sent to tell you, they—they’re needed urgently, sir, at the Cavalry Division camp.” He drew a choked breath. “The Light Brigade—my regiment, sir, they—they’ve been wiped out.”
“Wiped out?” Phillip echoed, shocked and bewildered. “What do you mean?”
“It looks,” Captain Tatham put in grimly, “as if the attack on the Causeway Heights has failed, Mr Hazard. The cavalry—”
“No, sir,” the young trooper interrupted, tears streaming unashamedly down his cheeks. “The cavalry did not attack the Causeway, they … they charged the guns, sir, the Russian guns at the end of the North Valley. The Light Brigade, sir, they charged the guns and—”
“But in heaven’s name!” Captain Tatham exclaimed. “There must be some mistake—”
“No, sir.” The 8th Hussars trooper shook his head wretchedly. “There’s no mistake, sir. That’s what they did. A galloper brought word from Lord Raglan himself and … I’ve seen them, sir, those that got back. Just a handful and all of them wounded. They say the French Chasseurs went in to aid them and that the Heavies tried to cover their retreat, otherwise none of them would have got out alive. My regiment, sir …” His teeth closed over his trembling lower lip, as he made a brave effort to control himself. “All that’s left of them is the half squadron in attendance on Lord Raglan, my troop and B troop, sir. The rest …” He could not go on.
Phillip and Captain Tatham exchanged horrified glances. The North Valley, Phillip thought, why had the Light Brigade charged the Russian guns in the North Valley? Surely not on Lord Raglan’s orders, alone and unsupported? He wondered whether Lord Cardigan had led them, whether he, too, was dead but, when he asked his galloper, the man did not know. He had, it appeared, seen only a few of the survivors, desperately wounded men on lamed and mutilated horses, who had somehow managed to escape the dreadful carnage and drag themselves back to the South Valley. Some were being cared for by their own surgeons in the Cavalry Division’s field hospital but this, already crowded with wounded from the Heavy Brigade, was hard pressed and badly in need of help.
“I will send the stretcher parties up,” Captain Tatham said. “They are standing by and I’ll try to get some wagons. Go ahead of them to Kadi-Koi, Mr Hazard, so that you can direct them to where they are most needed.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Phillip acknowledged. He mounted his horse and, the trooper in stunned silence at his heels, returned to Kadi-Koi.
When the naval stretcher parties reported to him, he worked with them, as he had done at the Alma, sickened and heartbroken by what he saw. The scenes he witnessed in the field hospitals and dressing stations would, he knew, never be erased from his memory for as long as he lived. Hour after weary hour the surgeons toiled, amputating shattered limbs, patching up broken bodies, performing their ghastly work to the sound of agonized screams, for there was little they could do to alleviate the suffering of the wounded men, to many of whom death came as a relief. Chaplains knelt beside the dying, offering their prayers, giving what comfort faith could provide, now holding a flask of water to parched lips, now giving absolution to men who pleaded for it mutely from pain-dimmed eyes, unable to speak.
On one journey, with a loaded wagon, to the hospital above the harbour, Phillip saw Lord Cardigan ride past, bare-headed, several members of his staff with him and one, apparently, badly wounded, for two of his brother officers had to support him to keep him from falling from his horse. The Light Brigade commander did not speak, did not glance into the wagon or the stretchers borne by the naval party; he rode past, his glittering uniform covered with dust, his face devoid of expression, as if he were lost in thought and oblivious to his surroundings. A wounded sergeant of the 11th Hussars called out to him from his stretcher but he seemingly did not hear and, as the mounted party vanished from sight, the sergeant murmured wryly, “Well, his lordship made history today, like a real hero. That was all I wanted to tell him. He led us all the way and was the first to reach the guns—a real hero.”
Thinking to console him, Phillip, who was leading his horse, paused beside the stretcher. “His lordship did not hear you, Sergeant, but he’d be glad, I feel sure, to know your opinion of his conduct.”
“It’s the truth,” the wounded man said. “I never saw him flinch, not once, and the shells were bursting all round him. The only time he raised his voice was when Captain Nolan tried to ride past him—then his lordship hollered out, ordering him back into line. I think, myself, sir, that the Captain was trying to stop us—he brought the order from Lord Raglan, you see, and I reckon it was a mistake. We were never meant to charge those guns, it was madness, sending us in alone like that without the infantry. But a shell struck Captain Nolan in the chest. Funny thing …” The sergeant glanced up at Phillip, an odd little smile playing about his lips. “Even after that, he didn’t fall from his horse. Rode back right through us, he did, with his right arm held high above his head and a terrible sort of shrieking sound coming from him. I saw him and I heard the scream he gave. It was like nothing human, that scream.” He drew a laboured, sighing breath and closed his eyes, as if suddenly at the limit of his endurance. Before the stretcher reached its destination, he was dead… .
3
By nightfall, the naval party had done all that was required of them and Phillip dismissed them. He made his way back to Kadi-Koi in the swiftly gathering darkness, feeling unutterably weary and his injured leg starting to ache again. Food and a chance of a few hours’ rest were what he craved but the Sanspareil had been entering harbour when he had made his last journey down to Balaclava and he was anxious to inform Sir Colin Campbell of the battleship’s reassuring presence there before asking permission to go off duty. Lights gleamed from the farmhouse in which the commander of the Highland Brigade had established his headquarters but, on reaching it, one of the staff officers on duty told him that Sir Colin was with the 79th.
“The Brigade is complete once more, Mr Hazard,” he added, with satisfaction. “The Guards are to return to the plateau but both the 42nd and the 79th are to remain here with us, heaven be praised! Sir Colin has gone to inspect our reorganized defenses, with Colonel Sterling, if you want to see him—but I can send a message to him, if you wish. You look as if you’ve worked yourself to a standstill.”
Conscious that he had, Phillip accepted his offer gratefully. He was on his way to his tent when a tall, kilted figure stepped out of the shadows to block his path.
“Sir!” The Highlander saluted and Phillip recognized him, by his voice rather than by his appearance in the dimness, as Sergeant MacCorkill of the 93rd, with whose wife Catriona Lamont had found shelter. He reined in.
“Sergeant MacCorkill, is it not? What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
The Sergeant laid a big hand on his horse’s bridle. He said respectfully, “With your permission, sir, I will be taking you to our camp. There is someone who is wanting to see you urgently, in order to ask you to do her a favour. You’ll be wearied, I don’t doubt, but ’twould not be taking you very long and, if you have not eaten, my wife would gladly be heating a bowl of gruel for you. Her gruel is fine, nourishing stuff, sir.”
Phillip had to make an effort to force his exhausted brain to take in what the man was saying. Someone wanted to ask a favour of him … was not that what he had said, before extolling the merits of his wife’s gruel? Certainly there was someone in the Highlanders’ camp to whom he owed a favour, a lady who … he smothered a yawn. In the circumstances, he could hardly refuse the tall Ser
geant’s request, so he inclined his head.
“Very well, Sergeant. But tell me, you are taking me to Miss Lamont, are you not—Miss Catriona Lamont? She is, I presume, the ‘someone’ to whom you refer so guardedly?”
“Aye, sir.” The Sergeant started to lead his horse in the direction of the 93rd’s encampment. “That is—” He hesitated, glancing back as if uncertain, even now, of how far Phillip could be trusted. “I am taking you to the young lady you know as Mistress Lamont, sir.”
Phillip stared at him, searching his face in the dim light but learning little from it. “Is Lamont not her name, then?”
“It was her mother’s name,” Sergeant MacCorkill admitted. “We—my wife and I, sir—we were agreeing that it would be best if the young lady were to use her mother’s name whilst she was with us. There are reasons, you will understand and—”
“No,” Phillip objected, with some irritation. “I do not understand. Nor can I be expected to understand, unless you tell me the reasons for all this mystery.”
“Mystery, sir? There is no mystery. It is just that—”
“Is there not? Then why, pray, when I called at your camp yesterday and inquired for Mistress Lamont, did your wife and the other women deny her very existence? They even attempted to convince me that I had imagined my meeting with her! Why, Sergeant?”
“That will be for Mistress Catriona to tell you herself, sir,” the Sergeant returned woodenly.
“I can only assume that you are endeavouring to conceal her presence in your camp from the military authorities,” Phillip accused, determined to force the man to give him an explanation. “Is there some good reason for that?”