‘Carry-on, Colour-Sergeant, relax, lads. I’m grateful to you, Pegg. You two been out on picket?’
‘Sir,’ both privates replied.
‘See anything odd, or hear any movement from the Russians?’
‘Nothing, sir. I reckon Russ has had enough. We’ll be in the town in no time once the gunners get goin’ properly and the navy lads have a go at the harbour forts. Then there’ll be more grog and quim than we know what to do with. Don’t you reckon, sir?’ The taller of the two sentries hadn’t let the drizzle quench his spirits.
‘Well, Taylor, we shall have to see. I know Sevastopol seems to be guarded by no more than a park wall, but you’ve seen how the Russians can shoot and we don’t know how well they’ll hold up to our and the Froggy guns when the bombardment starts.’
‘They’ll just wrap their hand in, won’t they, sir?’
‘I hope so, Pegg, but what really worries me is that we won’t be able to make the siege tell before Russ has a go at Balaklava. Don’t forget General Menschikoff’s lads that got out of Sevastopol just as we arrived, there’ll be the devil to pay if they interfere with the lines of supply. Our guns have got to have enough rounds to fire at Russ, if they attack the port there’ll be real dramas.’ The damp little group seemed downcast. Morgan realized that he’d probably been more honest with them than they wanted him to be. ‘Well, lads, there’s a carrying party needed for Balaklava tomorrow, they need more powder and shot for the bombardment. So, Taylor if you’ve any strength left after tonight’s picket, volunteer for it and we’ll see if we can’t scare up enough grog and quim for all of us.’
‘Always ready for a bit of either—or both, come to that, sir.’ They were a good lot that could laugh in these conditions.
***
‘Oh, you lovely little thing!’
‘Run away to sea with me, darling!’
A gang of beefy sailors voiced their appreciation as Mary and Mrs Polley trundled down the Col Road towards Balaklava, the reins of the two squat local ponies barely needing to be held as they trotted gently downhill. Mrs Polley was the other Grenadier Company wife whose name had come out of the hat during the ballot in Weedon, much to the delight of her husband, George, a lance-corporal from Lincoln whom she looked after with cheerful zeal.
‘Oo, those matelots can’t get enough of us, can they?’ Mrs Polley was under no illusion about which of them was attracting the sailors’ admiration, and she was rewarded by a sparkling laugh from her companion.
The two long lines of seamen heaved at the ropes. Dripping, stripped to just their shirts despite the sharp wind that blew up onto the ridge from the river valley below, they pulled the barrel of a heavy naval gun on a two-wheeled sledge up towards the siege lines facing Sevastopol. Mary was always impressed by their cheerfulness, the easy, self-confidence about them and the relaxed discipline that would never have worked with soldiers. Solid, ruddy, happy, they never let her wagon go by without making it quite clear how they intended to provide the next seafaring generation for the nation.
‘Get on, you lubbers! You’ve only gone to sea ‘cos you’re frightened of your wives.’ Mrs Polley cawed with delight at Mary’s riposte, even attempting a coquettish wave.
‘Come aboard the Sphinx then, my duck, an’ I’ll show you something that frightens even my missus—but leave yer mum behind!’ Gales of laughter swept down the lines, Mrs Polley’s smile broadened and Mary twitched the reins. As they trotted past, the midshipman in charge scooped his cap from his teenage head and executed a tiny bow, a flush on his downy cheeks.
‘They don’t mean any harm, ladies, you know what they’re like.’
‘They’re good lads, sir, but just get that piece up to the ridge, will you, an’ give Russ a battering?’ Mary replied.
‘I was thinking of giving you a batt...sorry, miss, I’m spending too much time on the lower deck, good day to you both.’ The midshipman clapped his cap on his head and trotted off to re-join his party.
The last week had been busy for the women. The long-expected Allied bombardment had started well, French and British guns opening fire almost as one, making the air shiver with detonation after booming detonation—Mary even had to soothe her ponies with precious barley sugar and much stroking of ears. The crescendo had steadily grown, but then a great rumbling roar that seemed to go on for ever, had overwhelmed every other sound. A lucky Russian round (some said it was an old-fashioned red-hot shot) struck home at the main French magazine, blowing laboriously stock-piled ammunition sky-high.
Mary had been in the hospital tent at the time tending two lads whose trench-side had collapsed on them. The canvas had billowed tautly inwards as the shock-wave struck, and she’d rushed outside to see a dirty geyser of earth and odd little specks that Mrs Polley poetically described as ‘fragments of Frog’ plummeting to earth. A great cloud of smoke wafted along the French positions to their left and soon all of the guns in their sector fell silent.
At the same time, the fire from the Allied ships was making almost no impression against the harbour forts and whilst the British artillery tried to cover for the silence of the French, it was obvious that any attempt on Sevastopol would have to be delayed. During all this, of course, the Russians had been far from silent. A steady trickle of wounded and the odd corpse had been ferried back to the regimental hospital where Fergusson the surgeon and his team of orderlies and soldiers’ wives had done their best.
It had taken Mary and the rest of the women some time to learn the rudiments of cleaning, sponging and picking wounds clear of any bits of cloth that had been driven into them. Fergusson was at pains to explain how the lethal gangrene would soon set in to any puncture that hadn’t been properly probed not just for the projectile that had caused it, but for any wad of cloth that had been driven in as well. They were shown how careful teasing at a scrap of lint that poked from the edge of an oozing hole might produce a patch of material from deep within and, perhaps save a life. Some of the women and orderlies had no aptitude for the work, being clumsy or just careless, needlessly rough with the injured and cack-handed with delicate work.
At first Mary had recoiled from the blood and pus. Some of the girls in the kitchens at Glassdrumman had always been squeamish with joints from the butchers, but that had never bothered her. This was different, though. In the heat of battle at the Alma, she had just been able to steel herself to the screams and immediacy of wounds and death, but this deliberate nursing was entirely different. The men would come to the hospital usually mute with pain, their eyes speaking more than their lips. Many of them had been lying under fire for hours after being hurt, vital blood seeping away, healthy, robust men turned to shrivelled, suffering boys. At first the waste had appalled her. Too many would sink into death before her eyes and be borne away like so much offal, but like the others she had become accustomed to it, had come to accept the reality of war and overcome it. Unlike the others, though, Mary always saw the ripples of grief and dismay in every house and family that death visited.
As the bombardment dwindled to a rhythmic, routine drumming, so the flow of casualties lessened. Fergusson, as a reward for hard and skilful work asked Mary to take a wagon the seven or so miles to the port of Balaklava, pick up some medical supplies, find out what she could about regimental casualties in the main hospital there and ‘take a wee while to herself’.
‘Right, come on Mrs Polley, who’s that friend of yours in the cavalry this side of Balaklava?’ Mrs Polley had worked harder than most but she would never get the same recognition from men that Mary did.
‘Why, Betty Martin from Stockport. We was girls together. You remember her, we met her in Varna. Her husband’s with the Eighth Hussars, just got a tape, said the kettle’s always a-boiling and there’s a bed for the night for friends.’
‘Well, let’s go and see her, then, chances are that we can pick up the mail an’ get any news from Turkey.’
***
Mary had barely mentioned it. She’d last seen
her husband, James, loaded onto a litter at the Alma, unconscious with the blood from his shot-torn throat soaking through the bandage that she and Tony Morgan had applied. News came through with a litany of other snippets that he was recovering slowly in the Turkish base hospital at Scutari. Most assumed that she bore the tragedy stoically—it wasn’t the place of a soldier’s wife to be free with her emotions. But Mary knew the truth. Beyond guilt and duty she felt little for James Keenan.
Now she and Mrs Polley barged through the press of bodies in the cramped post office on Balaklava’s quayside. Everyone was here, from officers at Lord Raglan’s headquarters, to post NCOs from every regiment in the siege, to ragamuffin cabin boys off the merchantmen that crowded the harbour. The stone tiled-roof building had been a Russian official’s office for the administration of the port’s fishing—now it handled every communication for Britain’s army and navy in the Crimea. The floor was awash with mud and horse dung, the air heavy with bustling humanity that hadn’t glimpsed soap and water for a month or more.
‘Here, Mrs Keenan, here’s mail for the regiment from base hospital.’ Mrs Polley held a narrow sheaf of envelopes tied about with a piece of brown paper and red ribbon.
‘Let’s get outside into the light.’
It may have been brighter in the open, but the harbour was an appalling sight. The steep sides of Balaklava’s fjord reached up above them, scree set with the odd bush leading up to a series of ancient Genoese towers that dominated the approaches to the anchorage. Marines and sailors toiled upwards carrying every piece of military kit needed to build forts and earthworks to defend the place. An ingenious series of pulleys and ropes lofted gun barrels from a bomb-ketch in the harbour to the surrounding heights whilst mules brayed and whinnied their loads up the narrow tracks.
Below them, though, the harbour slopped and stank. Men-of-war of all types were moored alongside a maze of merchantmen, all busily unloading equipment, disembarking more troops and horses or taking the sick and wounded on board. But this press of living creatures had only one place to deposit its waste—the harbour waters. A sheen of filth floated there. Rubbish from the galleys vied with sewage and slops, whilst dead mules, horses, pigs and sheep drifted and bumped against the sides of the ships. Mrs Polley turned her eyes away from what she swore was a bobbing, shrouded, human head and both women clasped handkerchiefs to their noses against the reek.
‘The official report says your James is ‘poorly, recovering well’.’ Mrs Polley read the long list of the 95th’s casualties through her handkerchief. ‘You haven’t got anything from your husband, have you?’ she asked. Mary had riffled through the other letters, all of them addressed to other soldiers, none for her.
‘No, James is no great hand with a pen, but I’d hoped that one of the others might have helped him.’ She remembered how her husband’s hair was slick with blood, how his head had lolled as Tony Morgan helped to put him in the cart with its solid wooden wheels. Most of her never expected to see Private James Keenan alive again—a part of her hoped not to. She pushed the thought away. ‘Any letters there for Mr Morgan?’
‘Yes, quite a handful.’ Mrs Polley shuffled the letters for the young officer, throwing a knowing eye over them. ‘Mostly bills and boring stuff; but there’s a couple from Ireland and one from India.’ She passed the lot over for Mary’s inspection.
Mrs Polley was right—there were half a dozen written in the official-looking copperplate of agents, tailors and saddlers, one franked in Delhi that she guessed came from that old lecher Colonel Dick Kemp and two sent from Cork. One was certainly from Morgan’s father, Billy, but the other was a mystery.
‘Why, that’s nice, rounded hand-writing, ain’t it?’ Mrs Polley was as interested in the letter as Mary was. ‘Does it smell of scent?’
Mary hadn’t thought of that. She ran it under her nose and, sure enough, there was a trace of something floral. ‘It does, Mrs Polley. I was afraid that it might be from some grand Proddy woman that’s got her eye on Mr Morgan; but it can’t be, it smells too nice. If it had come from Maude-bloody-Hawtrey, it would have reeked of church candles and horse sweat.’ Both women laughed.
‘Come on Mrs Polley, if Mrs Martin’s as free with her hospitality as you say she is, let’s get to her before dark.’ The pair gathered up their papers and package of medical supplies and found their wagon, swiftly removing the ponies’ nosebags and heading away from the harbour. Mary’s visits to Balaklava were infrequent enough for her to forget the stench of the place—now it hung at the back of her throat.
***
The 8th Hussars had aligned their tents perfectly. Sitting in the bottom of the Balaklava valley, each of the Light Cavalry Brigade’s five regiments had pitched their tents symmetrically so that the prevailing wind would carry the smoke of the cooking fires away. Now the two 95th wives walked their covered hospital cart through empty horse lines whose troughs were being filled in preparation for the return of the regiments. Like every other Brigade, as dusk fell the eight-hundred horsemen had moved to their battle positions in case the enemy attacked at the most vulnerable time of the day. The women saw the camp flags of the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons and the skull and crossbones insignia of the 17th Lancers.
‘Bet the Frogs don’t like to be reminded o’ that, Mrs Polley.’ Mary smiled ruefully at the flag.
‘Aye, all those lads that our boys lanced at Waterloo.’ Mrs Polley was as keen as Mary to believe the fallacy of the latest anti-French story.
‘Where d’you think Mrs Martin will be?’
‘Not sure, but she’ll be somewhere near the farrier’s lines, so look for a forge. There it is.’ Mrs Polley shot a coarse finger towards a box-bodied wagon and a low, smoky, stone hearth.
As they approached a pair of tents a generous back and shoulders came into sight, chopping steadily at billets of wood. Mrs Martin wielded a saw-bladed Russian pioneer’s sword with precision, each blow splitting packing-case pine into kindling for the cooking fires. No more than twenty-three, she wore the same bun and full skirt as Mrs Polley, but there the similarity ended for she was florid, sturdy, broad of thigh and rump, a podgy hand easily hefting the chunky brass sword hilt. Her dull brown bodice strained to contain her, almost hidden by the soiled cotton apron that she wore above. Mary pulled the wagon to a halt beside her.
‘Mrs Betty Martin.’ Mrs Polley’s greeting brought the chopping to an end. There was a brief pause whilst Betty stared hard at them through the gathering gloom.
‘Well, Mrs Victoria Polley, as I live and breathe, and one of her chums from up on the hill; I’ve been waiting for you. Tether those nags yonder—have you feed enough for them? There’s coffee or tea and just time for a cup before the men get back—will you stay for the night?’
The torrent of welcome continued. Mrs Martin’s plump arms flew from kettle to cups to dainty, crockery milk jug in the tent next to the forge for the cavalry had managed to make themselves considerably more comfortable down in the valley than the infantry and gunners on the hill. Then, just as night had fallen, the jangle, scrape and smell of many horses overwhelmed the camp. Subdued voices muttered low commands.
‘Ah, they’ve stood-down. Tom will be in once they’ve got the tack off but, pound to a penny, he’ll be out during the night. He mithers the poor loves to death, that Lord Cardigan of ours; real gentleman, but, oh, he does delight in the slightest alarm. Tom says some God-forsaken Turk up in the redoubts on the ridge there has only got to imagine Russ frolicking about and its ‘boots and saddles’ and poor Tom and the rest up and out, half-perished and the wretched horses, Tom says, out of condition and, Tom says, off their fodder and...’
Betty would have overwhelmed them had Mary not cut-in hard. ‘He may be a so-called gentleman, this lord of yours, but isn’t he the one that had his regiment taken off of him a few years back and has only got command again ‘cos he’s a favourite at court or some such nonsense? What makes him fit to order the likes of your husband or mine around and get them
hurt or killed?’
There was a shocked silence from the other two women at Mary’s outburst.
‘But, Mary, Mr Cardigan’s a lord. He’s used to telling folk what to do.’ Mrs Polley did her best to cover up for Mary in front of her friend.
‘That’s as maybe, but that Richard Carmichael of ours is related to some general, went to a grand school and, as you say, has been used to telling folk what to do all his life. Didn’t stop him running at the Alma though, did it, when my James went straight at Russ and got a bullet for his trouble.’ Mary’s cheeks were flushed with anger. ‘But that’s the point, love, the Cardigans, Carmichaels and the officers are just different from the likes of us...’ But Mary wouldn’t be soothed by Mrs Polley.
‘Different? Different, they’re all the same on a mattress, I can tell you.’
But Mary had gone too far. If there had been a shocked silence before, there was now mute, scandalized astonishment.
Luckily, Betty Martin’s tongue was equal to the occasion and hardly drawing breath for the next twenty minutes, she continued her description of Tom’s torments. She paused long enough to ask the ladies if they didn’t mind sleeping beneath the canvas of their own wagon due to Tom’s ‘being very particular about his privacy’, then the tea gave way to rum, a full beaker being poured just as the man himself pushed the canvas to one side, blinking in the light of the lantern. Short, wiry, whiskered, the farrier-corporal pulled the damp, furry busby from his head, the cloak from his shoulders and belt from around his waist before passing sabre and carbine to Betty.
‘There, my sweet, dab a bit of oil on them, shall yer? Oh, how rude I am, ladies, I didn’t know we had company.’ Tom, tired as he was, couldn’t forget his manners. ‘Will you not introduce us, Betty my love?’
‘This is my girlhood friend from Stockport, Mrs Victoria Polley and her companion Mrs Mary Keenan.’ The two women curtseyed—the whole scene might have been enacted in a Methodist church hall rather than a wind-swept tent. ‘They’re from the Ninety-Fifth who are up at the siege.’
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