The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

  One soft morning in September, before the day had shown its colours, she set off to walk up to the White Horse. She was heavy and cumbersome now, the baby seemed to sleep inside her, hanging weightily in its fleshy cradle. At times like this it felt big – far too big ever to leave the womb without tearing her apart, and she had to suppress a primitive fear of that separation – how it would happen, and when, and what the pain would be like. She wished that Hugo were here to clasp her in his arms and dispel her miserable fears with his confident delight.

  The incline was too steep for her and she didn’t reach the horse but stopped and lowered herself to the grass well short of it, at a point where its huge body arched over her, like the cow jumping over the moon. Cato, equally exhausted, flopped down beside her, panting gustily. Still, this place and the view it afforded quietened her. Bells, the village, her own former house away to the west, were all recent arrivals to the landscape. People, homes and settlements without number had come and gone in the instant that the White Horse leaped. Cato laid his head down and she did the same, lying carefully on her side and closing her eyes. The morning was still, but with her ear to the ground she could hear a dense, murmuring pulse of secret sound, like the earth’s heartbeat.

  She slept for no more than half an hour, but when she woke a pale sun had broken through. Cato was ambling about, tracing rabbit-runs with his nose. Stiffly Rachel got to her feet and began the homeward journey. Going downhill was if anything more tiring; she had to tense every muscle to pull her weight back and keep her balance. By the time she’d climbed the less demanding slope to the gate into Bells Wood she was very tired, but calm.

  Coming back between the trees opposite the house a sound made her look up, and she was startled to see a face looking back at her from among the branches. The other person was equally surprised, for the eyes widened, the mouth made a dark ‘O’, and the next thing she knew there was a crash and rustle of breaking twigs as a small boy fell out of the tree and landed with a thud on the path in front of her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ She leaned forward and held out her hand to help him up, but he scrambled to his feet unaided and apparently unhurt.

  ‘Sorry, miss, I slipped.’

  ‘I can see that. Are you sure there’s no damage done?’

  He shook his head, his eyes taking in her condition with fascinated interest, making a series of lightning calculations and putting two and two together. He was about eight years old, dark, bright-eyed and sallow, like an Italian boy.

  ‘Are you Mrs Latimer?’

  ‘I am.’ She waited, smiling. ‘I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.’

  Understanding the tone rather than the words, he said: ‘I’m Ben Bartlemas.’

  ‘Ah, you’re Mercy’s brother.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ she asked.

  ‘Teacher’s ill.’

  ‘I see.’ This made perfect sense, since the village school teacher, Mr Prale, was stricken in years and a martyr to all manner of respiratory and rheumatic problems whose influence began each autumn and lasted until spring. ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’

  ‘Yes’m. She did say to tell you, she told Mercy to tell you but you weren’t there.’

  ‘Well, now I know, so that’s all right.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He scuffed at the broken twigs. ‘About the tree.’

  ‘It’s been there a long time, it’s far older than either of us. I’m sure it will survive.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. He had a composed confidence that stopped just short of cheekiness. He reminded her of Hugo.

  ‘Would you like some lemonade?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Come along then.’

  He accompanied her over the grass, exactly matching his stride to hers. ‘Can I come and work here when I’m older?’

  Since directness was the order of the day she made her answer direct. ‘Yes, if there’s a job that needs doing that you can do.’

  ‘I like horses.’

  ‘So do I,’ she said briskly, ‘but that doesn’t mean I should know enough to look after them properly myself.’

  ‘My brother Colin used to look after the horses,’ declared Ben.

  ‘I know.’

  He fixed a candid gaze on her, gauging her possible reaction to his next remark. ‘He got killed in the Russian war.’

  ‘Yes, I know that too. I was so sorry.’

  She knew exactly what he wanted to ask, and waited to see if he would.

  ‘Did Mr Latimer get killed in the war?’

  ‘No. He was killed in an accident.’

  ‘He fell off his horse, didn’t he?’

  So he had known the answer to the first question before asking it. ‘That’s right.’ They reached the house. ‘Just about where you fell out of the tree. Come along.’

  They went across the hall, through the door and down the back stairs. In the kitchen were Jeavons, Mrs Mundy the cook, Little, and Mercy Bartlemas, the latter with a red face and hair on end. Jeavons and Mrs Mundy wore slightly disapproving expressions and Little had a sniggering air. All the expressions changed as Rachel and Ben appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Ben!’ Mercy advanced on her brother, too put out even to acknowledge Rachel. ‘Whatever have you been doing? I looked everywhere for you, you little so and so!’

  ‘I was climbing trees,’ replied Ben, against a background of head-shaking and clucking from the others. He looked up at Rachel. ‘Wasn’t I?’

  ‘When you weren’t falling out of them,’ she agreed, and turned to Mercy. ‘He descended on me like Newton’s apple.’

  ‘Oh, no, he didn’t, did he, mum? Did you get hurt? You’re going to get such a hiding from me, Ben Bartlemas! Are you all right, mum? And your father . . . just you wait! I’m ever so sorry, mum!’ The tone of Mercy’s outburst veered quite comically from remorse to vengeful fury.

  ‘We were both quite unhurt, Mercy. And I understand that you would have told me Ben was with you if I hadn’t been out for a walk.’

  Mercy’s colour deepened. ‘That’s right, mum, I would have done . . .’

  ‘He can come whenever he likes when he doesn’t have to go to school. On condition that he makes himself useful.’

  Mercy looked doubtful. ‘He’s not up to much, mum.’

  ‘We’ll let Oliver be the judge of that, shall we?’

  ‘Oliver?’ Mercy’s voice rose to a squeak. Little smirked, and even Jeavons and Mrs Mundy, ostensibly setting out cleaned silver on a tray, betrayed a discreet ripple of surprise.‘Oliver – the horses?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Rachel. ‘Ben tells me he’d like to work with horses so he might as well learn something about it.’ She looked down at him. ‘Does that sound like a good idea?’

  To her amusement he gave a brief show of considering the suggestion. ‘Yes, thank you.’

  Mercy snorted. ‘He’s got an awful lot to learn, mum, I hope you’ll tell Oliver that.’

  ‘Oh, I shall.’ Rachel turned to leave. ‘After all, Mercy, you’ve learned wonderfully well about gardening, haven’t you?’ She nodded dumbly. ‘Now why don’t you introduce Ben to Oliver on your way back to work? And, Little, don’t you have something to do?’

  Mercy caught her brother’s wrist in a grip so tight her knuckles showed pale, but it was plain nothing could tarnish his delight. On the point of going Rachel caught Ben’s eye, and was rewarded by a smile so broad and confiding, so full of a regard that owed nothing to status, age or gender and everything to real affection and gratitude, that it tripped her heart and she had to leave swiftly.

  The heat increased; the landscape grew emptier. Of natural wildlife there was no sign – swaying camels, sprinting hares, fluttering birds and butterflies, all had disappeared into the trembling glare of the sun’s furnace. Even the drone of files had subsided. And if they’d hoped to find domestic livestock to supplement their supplies they were disappointed. The few small farms they cam
e across were empty, burned-out shells with neither man nor beast to be seen. Only once or twice they came across the picked skeletons of cows and were reminded that from some unimaginable distance in the whitened sky the slow-wheeling vultures watched their progress. One or two had been sighted, the first ever seen, it was said, in this part of the world. The conclusion that they must have followed the fleet from Varna was not a comforting one.

  With the first smell of smoke there was another tremor of renewed energy through the ranks. The men’s heads came up, the horses’ nostrils opened nervously. Whatever else it signified, smoke was the airborne signature of those who had been that way before – and recently – and the notice of conflict to come. The enemy was near, and expected them.

  They came over the next rise in heavy silence, the front line of their columns steady and unbroken, snaking to the distant sea. And like the curtain rising on a theatrical performance they saw for the first time the scene set for war. Far to their left was the source of the smoke – a torched village, still burning. In the shallow valley before them they could clearly make out the greener, tree-fringed path of a stream, crossed half a mile to the east by the post-road bridge. Just this side of the bridge, between armies and stream, was a neat whitewashed house, unmarked itself but surrounded by a charred barn and outbuildings. The rising ground a mile or so beyond the stream was shadowed with broad bands of trees and scrub.

  The advance party of cavalry, Harry among them, went forward under Cardigan to investigate what they were told was the Imperial Post-house. Leonard Palliser jerked his head in the direction of a rider in dark civilian clothes, the Irish journalist of The Times. His lip curled.

  ‘As if we don’t have enough to contend with without the fourth estate, tagging along.’

  From the slight contact he had had with Russell, Harry liked him. He was a downright, curious, disrespectful sort of fellow completely unconcerned for his own safety and with no regard for the conventions of war.

  ‘He seems a sound enough fellow. And at least those at home are kept properly and truthfully informed.’

  Palliser harumphed. ‘Ignorance is bliss.’

  ‘Until the worst happens.’ Harry thought briefly of Colin Bartlemas, and Roebridge – of Piper, even. ‘Then one might wish one had been better prepared.’

  ‘Disagree,’ said Palliser who was nothing if not predictable. ‘People in England need to believe that we are entirely successful. Then if a man dies it’s a glorious sacrifice and not a damned shame, wouldn’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  As they drew closer to the post-house the dark patches in the middle distance which they had taken for trees revealed themselves to be a Birnam Wood of massed cossack cavalry.

  ‘Ah,’ remarked Palliser as though passing a friend’s carriage in Kensington Gardens. ‘At last. Our friends the enemy.’

  Orders were given for some of the troop to spread out in a line parallel to the stream (they heard it was called the River Bulganak). Cardigan himself sat motionless on horseback near the bridge, peering through his spyglass at the hills opposite. A dozen or so riders including Harry, Palliser, Fyefield and the journalist Russell, went down to the house and dismounted.

  To their surprise after so much lifeless desolation, there was a peahen stalking and pecking near the open door. She screeched halfheartedly at their arrival and flapped her wings, lifting herself off the ground by no more than a few inches before returning to her pecking. Harry found something comforting in her fussy, domestic goings-on, her sweet, foolish, chickeny ignorance of the two mighty armies which confronted each other beyond the confines of the courtyard.

  Russell clearly thought the same, for he picked up one of the long, drab feathers shed by the peahen and tucked it in his lapel, before taking aim with his revolver and shooting her. The single shot in this enclosed space made the horses start and sidle. As Russell picked up the still-flapping bird he caught Harry’s eye and gave him a jaunty wink.

  ‘Gone but not forgotten,’ he said.

  Respect for its Imperial status may have prevented the house from being torched, but there was little of any consequence left inside. A picture of a sad-eyed saint presided over one empty room and in another a single broken chair lay on its side, with next to it a ripped yellow cushion, surrounded by a drift of downy feathers.

  In the kitchen there were some pots and pans still standing on the range and a pestle and mortar on the windowsill. Bunches of aromatic dried herbs hung from the ceiling, whose smell could still he detected over the stench of smoke. Harry reached up and snatched down a handful of one of the bunches. The grey-green leaves and small flowerheads broke into fine grains in his palm and flooded his head with their wonderful scent. He pushed what remained of it into the pocket of his overalls.

  The cavalry officers were incongruous in this confined domestic space, their brilliant colours harsh, their shakos brushing the ceilings, their spurs jingling. Fyefield pushed the tip of his sabre into one of the hanging saucepans and rattled it like a schoolbell.

  Outside an extraordinary sight greeted them.The poor overheated infantry on arrival at the river had been unable to contain themselves and having broken ranks were down on all fours on the bank alongside the thirsty horses, lapping the water and splashing it over their heads and shoulders. Bowing perhaps to the inevitable a halt was called, so that all ranks could drink and fill their water bottles. Harry saw Russell riding to the back, the peahen tied to his saddle, presumably to hand her over to the cooks. In the opposite direction, perhaps a mile and a half away, he could make out the glint of sunlight on the cossacks’ lances.

  After an interval of around fifteen minutes during which the cossacks remained motionless, the order was given to form ranks and advance, with the cavalry going ahead. While Cardigan and his staff – accompanied as ever by Russell, now without his burden – trotted smartly over the narrow post-road bridge, the rest of them splashed through the stream. The water was low and when the horses emerged on the south side they were coated to the shoulder, and their riders to halfway up their boots, in mud like melted chocolate.

  The order came to spread out and they rode forward at a slow and disciplined pace. Now that they were moving across the bottom of the river valley the picture before them was no longer clear. What from some distance away had looked like the solid face of an escarpment, carved by narrow gulleys, was now identifiable as a series of ascending ridges, and as they advanced so the enemy cavalry seemed to melt away beyond the first of these. To Harry it was uncomfortably akin to being drawn on by the false hope of a mirage, except that this carried a real threat. What might be waiting over that first gentle, unassuming rise? The heat was intense: the mud on Clemmie’s flanks and on his boots was already dry and cracked. The mare’s ears flicked back and forth nervily and he spoke to her in a soft voice.

  They continued forward, and now they could see a handful of cavalry vedettes looking down on them from the shoulder of the first rise. In a moment they too had gone. Now they were trotting collectedly through a melon field and as the horses’ hooves bruised and crushed the ripe fruit the air filled with a delicious sweet smell that made Harry’s dry mouth fill with saliva. It was strange to be advancing in battle order across this fertile farmland, treading the melons to wine.

  The ground began to rise. They came out of the field and the horses were working harder now to maintain the same controlled and steady pace on the incline. Clemmie’s neck darkened and glistened with sweat along its strong swell of muscle. As they approached the top of the rise they received the order to walk, and Harry permitted himself a look over his shoulder. The narrow river still teemed as far as the eye could see with troops drinking and cooling down, with beyond them more and still more coming. On this side of the Bulganak the lancers were coming through the melon field, the younger and more irrepressible ones spearing whole melons and brandishing them in the air, catching the dripping juice in their mouths. Their horseplay was in sharp contrast to t
he awful quiet on the other side of the rise.

  They reached the top, and with it a full appreciation of their position. Another, but slightly less wide valley of no more than a quarter of a mile now separated them from the cossacks, who were massed on the steep slope opposite. A halt was called. Harry and the skirmishers held their position. At this closer range the cossack force, still, darkly dressed and densely packed on their stocky little horses, presented a formidable picture: an army on its home ground, accustomed to the conditions and the terrain. For the first time his stomach fluttered with fear and a childish pang of homesickness at the thought that the face of one of these fierce unyielding little horsemen might be the last thing he saw on earth.

  The order ‘Skirmishers – draw swords – trot!’ had been given, but was instantly revoked as Lord Lucan was seen approaching Cardigan. They halted, men fuming, horses champing at the bit. Behind the skirmishers there was now drawn up the full might and panoply of the British cavalry, gorgeous in scarlet, blue and gold, stopped in their tracks like some epic version of the game of Grandmother’s Footsteps that Harry could remember playing with Hugo and Salter.

  The argument continued, and was joined by Lord Airey, the emissary of the Commander-in-Chief. Sweat trickled from men and horses as they sat in their imaginary bandbox.

  When the first carbine shot rang out, it was a relief. With that small streak of white smoke the tension was dispelled. Now, surely, it had begun! In the ensuing volley none of the shot came close enough to do damage, but incredibly the order was given for the skirmishers to retreat and rejoin their squadrons. To have come so far, and waited so long, to turn back in the face of fire – it was insupportable! In that instant Harry understood how strong, once initiated, was the impulse to attack. The urge was overwhelming to release the power of the horse and to go forward with ever-increasing speed, to do or die. The fear had not gone, but it swirled in him like strong drink, creating an energy which now that it was thwarted, rose in the back of his throat like bile. Between the carbine fire they could hear the whoops of the cossacks, jeering at them, adding to the bitterness of retreat.