The Street Philosopher (10 page)

The other wives nodded, murmuring their agreement. ‘Quite paramount, indeed,’ echoed one piously.

Lichfield shrugged, smiling weakly, attempting to appear as one who was entirely sympathetic, but whose hands were very firmly tied. ‘You must remain here, Mrs Boyce.’

Madeleine decided promptly on another course of action. She gave a heavy sigh. ‘Then I shall return to camp,’ she said quietly, lifting a limp hand to her brow. ‘I fear it is all too much for me. Do not worry, Captain, an escort from my husband’s regiment is nearby.’ She handed Lichfield his telescope, bade him a sad farewell and started down the hill.

After proceeding a short distance, Madeleine stopped and turned around. The other wives had forgotten her already, returning their attention to the battle; whilst Captain Lichfield was back at the generals’ side, receiving some lengthy instructions. The path to his horse was clear.

Madeleine’s crinoline obliged her to adopt an awkward side-saddle. The bay, more accustomed to carrying hussars, shifted beneath this strange rider, snorting in bewilderment. She patted its neck soothingly, and urged the horse around the hill, away from its owner and towards the sound of the guns.

They soon arrived at the post road to Sebastopol, a dirt track that ran behind the advance at a rough diagonal. An artillery officer, seeing a lone woman riding in the direction of the fighting, called out to her in alarm. He rushed over in an attempt to take the bay’s bridle, but was easily outrun.

Madeleine didn’t know precisely what she would do once she was on the battlefield. She imagined finding Richard, pinned down by enemy fire, and galloping to his rescue. Having escaped the fighting, they would then escape the war, and her husband with it, running away together to somewhere they would never be found. She realised that actually bringing this wonderful flight about would be most difficult. Richard could be anywhere in that vast, chaotic valley. And there were other dangers–if Nathaniel were to see her out there, he would guess her purpose immediately. Yet Madeleine knew with a terrible certainty that if Richard were to die, she would die also. If there was a chance that she could save him, then she must act or be forever damned. She resolved to brush aside all her fearful doubts and simply respond to events as they unfurled, whilst keeping her object always in mind. Trotting towards the battle along the post road, she felt full of strong, clear-headed determination.

Despite the heavy screen of smoke, the cannon-fire up ahead seemed to be growing ever more intense, as if the gunners were attempting to compensate for the fact that they were firing blind by firing twice as often. Units of British horse artillery had joined the fight, rolling up close behind the lines of infantry. Even at a mile and a half’s distance, the sound was quite overpowering. Madeleine wondered how anyone could stand it for more than a couple of minutes. And the landscape, so picturesque only two hours before, had been thoroughly despoiled by the passage of the army. Fences, hedges and trees had been blasted away, and soft green fields trampled to mud.

She cleared a low rise in the plain. Before her, at least sixty badly wounded infantrymen had been laid out along the sides of the road, flailing and thrashing in their agony. Bandsmen and a handful of civilian orderlies weaved amongst them, binding wounds as best they could with lengths of lint, and passing around canteens of water.

Too late, Madeleine tried to avert her eyes. The bay grew restless, unnerved by the smell of warm blood, lifting its hooves and shaking its head. Then a private, bleeding heavily from the midriff, began to screech in agony as she passed,
a horribly high-pitched sound, his legs pedalling against the mud as if he were working a treadmill. The horse started, tossing its mane; then it stepped around the wounded man, leaving the post road and heading towards open ground. Madeleine pulled at the reins as hard as she could, but the animal ignored her completely.

She considered calling to the orderlies for assistance, but something made her hesitate; and before she could change her mind, the bay had quickened its pace to a canter, and she was forced to devote all of her energy to remaining in the saddle. Madeleine flung her arms around the horse’s thick neck, and the bay and its helpless rider charged off into the battlefield.

Squinting, Kitson looked out from what remained of the copse. Close by were the soldiers of the 99th, gripping their rifles tightly. They had been lying down under fire now for over an hour. Every one of them was drenched with sweat, and flecked with dirt and blood. Their eyes, milky white in their grimy skin, were staring ahead, alert for incoming fire. The riverside village had all but burned to the ground, and the curtain of smoke was gradually being drawn away by the breeze, revealing their foe. The Russian fortifications, studied close up, seemed virtually impregnable; steep, dark walls of earth behind which bristled a multitude of musket barrels.

A mounted messenger was galloping along the line. He pulled up next to two senior officers; Kitson recognised Sir George Brown, the General in command of the Light Division, and Sir William Codrington, the Major-General who led Brown’s first brigade.

‘Here we go, my lads,’ murmured Cracknell, spitting on the ground. ‘This is it.’

The buglers began sounding the order to advance a moment later. Wearily, the soldiers got up once again, the officers taking their places in front of the long ranks. Raising himself on to his elbows, Kitson surveyed the ground before the army, stretching down to the banks of the River Alma. A significant proportion of the 99th, he saw, would be advancing through a vineyard, alongside the smoking ruins of the village.

‘Hardly parade ground conditions, are they?’ the senior correspondent said, noting the direction of Kitson’s gaze. ‘Be interesting indeed to see how they manage this one.’

Kitson did not reply. He was finding Cracknell’s zeal for war increasingly unsettling. Neither had he fully recovered from his dismay at the sight of that revolver. It seemed to imply the horrible possibility that Cracknell’s ambitions were not rooted solely in the journalistic sphere; that he might seek out a confrontation with the enemy, and attempt to win glory for himself through the spilling of blood.

Boyce remained in clear view, Captain Wray by his side, conferring heatedly with Major Maynard. Before long, the sturdy Major was dismissed, and sent back to his position on the line. He drew his sword as he walked back towards the ranks, swinging it from left to right as if attempting to ease stiff shoulders. He did not look pleased.

The Lieutenant-Colonel then turned his horse about, stood in his stirrups and addressed his soldiers. ‘You men, you’re about to go into action. Do not fire until you are ordered. Do not leave the line, for any reason–if you do, you’ll taste the lash. You have taken the Queen’s shilling, every last one of you, and you will honour your debt to her. I will make sure of it.’ The bugles started to sound once again. Boyce raised his voice higher. ‘Now, to battle! Advance!’

Cracknell shook with laughter as the army moved off. ‘Good Lord, Boyce really knows how to put some fire in his troops, don’t he?’

The enemy barrage picked up, pounding into the advancing redcoats. Kitson clenched his fists as tightly as he could and surveyed the assault. In the centre of the line, an exploding shell cut down five men as if they were made from straw.

‘Looks a bit hot down there at the moment,’ Cracknell said, lighting a cigar. ‘I think we’ll make a brief pause–allow them to cover a bit of ground before we pick up the pursuit once again.’ He drew out his pocketbook and opened the cover. ‘Let’s get something down. Observations and the like. While they’re still fresh in the mind.’

Kitson nodded and tried to work, but was unable to
compose more than fractured notes. A minute or so passed; Cracknell asked for another word for ‘unstoppable’.

‘Inexorable,’ Kitson yelled back over the guns.

‘Aha.’ Cracknell made a correction. ‘Of course. I knew that you were on this campaign with good reason, Thomas.’

Kitson smiled mirthlessly and carried on writing.

There were shouts, and the blasts of NCOs’ whistles. The senior correspondent closed his book, got to his knees and looked down towards the river. ‘Come, gentlemen. It is time for us to follow.’ He heaved himself up, and started out on to the battlefield, stepping through the ragged, barely recognisable bodies that fringed the copse as if they were nothing more than fish heads in the gutters of a city market.

Kitson edged over to Styles, who had not moved. The illustrator had a piece of paper before him, on which he had succeeded only in making a crude study of a dismembered foot. ‘Mr Styles,’ he said, ‘we are leaving.’

Styles quickly packed away his drawing equipment. He looked profoundly scared. Kitson found that he was strangely reassured by this, and liked the illustrator all the more for it. Fear was the only sane reaction to their current circumstances, and formed a welcome contrast to the unflinching bravado of their senior. Taking Styles’ arm, he helped him to his feet. ‘This way–towards the vineyard. Be sure to keep your head down.’ Together, they ventured from the copse.

A heavier trail of corpses marked the path of the advance, bodies crumpled on the ground as if they had been dropped from a height, cast aside by some enraged giant. The loose stone wall surrounding the vineyards had been knocked down, swept away by the force of the line, its rocks kicked amongst the vines by the soldiers’ boots. Clearing the remains of the wall, they ducked under the canopy of leaves. Cracknell was nowhere to be seen. The red tunics of the soldiers could just be glimpsed up ahead, moving through the closely planted vines. These provided little shelter from the Russian bombardment, shrapnel having torn through branches and men alike. The two
Courier
men stumbled across a ghastly slick of disgorged innards; Styles fell dizzily to his knees,
retching so hard he lost his balance. Kitson leant over him, placing steadying hands on the illustrator’s shoulders.

Cracknell pushed through the vine leaves next to them. ‘And what’s keeping you two, may I ask?’ he demanded. A second later, he noticed the sheet-white Styles. The senior correspondent swore. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ His eyes widened. ‘Holy Christ, he hasn’t been hit, has he?’

‘No, Mr Cracknell, I believe he’s—’

Cracknell’s interest immediately diminished. ‘Then what? A fever?’ He turned away, checking the progress of the advancing troops. ‘Surely he hasn’t been around the miasmas of the camp for long enough to have contracted cholera?’

Kitson shook his head. ‘No, sir, it is not that either.’ He cleared his throat, bracing himself for a ferocious reaction. ‘It is for the best, I think, if we pause again, to recover our bearings.’

The senior correspondent was not listening. His attention was given over entirely to the battle. ‘Did you hear that, Thomas?’ he asked, raising a forefinger. Kitson looked around vaguely, unable to make out any individual sounds in the hellish clamour that enveloped them. ‘Muskets! They’re within musket range–they must almost be at the river! Come, we must get closer!’

‘A pause, sir, that is all I ask, so we—’

Cracknell stared at his junior in utter astonishment. ‘A
pause
? What the devil are you talking about, man? We have to
keep up
! We have to
know
, don’t you understand?’ His irritation was growing with his impatience.

Kitson’s careful detachment, straining throughout this exchange, started to give way. This was the ugly reverse of Cracknell’s inspiring idealism and frequent invocation of camaraderie: a savage disdain for those he believed were failing or opposing him. The journey between these two attitudes seemed to be a short one indeed. ‘You misunderstand me, Mr Cracknell,’ he responded, as calmly as he could. ‘I merely wish to do what is in the best interests of the
Courier
and its correspondents.’

The senior correspondent heard none of this. ‘Oh, do what
you will!’ He got to his feet, and started towards the Alma. ‘I, at least, intend to do my duty!’

Boyce cleared the vineyard. A shrapnel gash on the mare’s side was bleeding on to his left boot, and quite spoiling its shine. He’d tried wiping it with a rag, but this only served to make the problem worse. None of the annals of war, he reflected bitterly, told one that battle was such a confoundedly
dirty
business.

The musket-fire from the enemy positions started like a summer rainstorm. One, then two, then six shots; and then a downpour, the balls pinging off stones, tearing through vine leaves, and slapping into the mud with hissing plops. Boyce’s unlucky mare caught one in her haunch, neighing in distress as she spun around, looking for her assailant. The Lieutenant-Colonel struggled to rein her in, his eyes fixed on the Russian redoubts. What an uncivilised horde, he thought. Their fire is utterly uncoordinated–haphazard, even. They have no conception of the basic codes and systems of combat. As he watched, a loose gang of them appeared above a crude parapet directly in front of him, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards up the hill. He could just make out their spiked helmets, and enormous dark moustaches, which were both untrimmed and unwaxed–could there be any plainer indication of their savagery? They did seem awfully close, though, all of a sudden. For the first time that day, Boyce became worried for his safety, and wished that his miserable troops would get the hell out of that vineyard.

Slowly, they emerged, in a rough semblance of the line, to be raked by the Russian muskets. Lieutenant Davy, who bore the regimental colours, was shot in the eye. His body folded neatly earthwards, the flag fluttering down after him. The men behind raised their miniés, and started to shoot back.

‘Hold your fire!’ Boyce yelled. ‘Hold your fire, damn you! Wait for the order! Sergeant, take the names of those men! Lieutenant Nunn, the colours!’

The other battalions of the Light and Second Divisions were arrayed along the gentle slope of the riverbank on either
side of the 99th Foot. Marshalled by their officers, they manoeuvred around each other and then plunged into the Alma. Boyce held back until the crossing was well underway, and then urged the mare forward; she leapt in gladly, as if believing that the waters would offer refuge from the battle. The river was cold, and surprisingly fast-flowing. Bullets, shells and shot from the enemy positions were beating the water to foam, and kicking up brown plumes of silt. Riding out to the middle, Boyce tried his best to enforce the line.

And then he saw him, like a sleek black vole, scurrying along behind the ranks of the 99th, and gingerly stepping out into the Alma. That blasted Irishman, the dishevelled paddy reporter, the one who Madeleine was, was–well, he couldn’t even bear to think of it. What the devil was he doing here, Boyce wondered, in the thick of battle, at the moment of glory, soiling it with his despicable presence? He waited until the wretch was out of the shallows, and then spurred his horse towards him.

The mare, her eyes bulging with pain and confusion, almost ran the correspondent down. He was knocked to one side, stumbling headlong into the water. Surfacing, he flailed about in an effort to reclaim his cap, which had fallen off and was now floating away.

‘Explain yourself, cur!’ snarled Boyce over the thunder of the guns.

Cracknell, having seized the lost cap, pulled it back on. ‘Why, Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce,’ he grinned, ‘fancy us meeting here! D’ye have a word on the battle for the
London
Courier
?’

‘You will
fall back
!’ Boyce cried, pointing furiously in the direction of the vineyard. ‘You will remove yourself from the field, this instant!’

Staying mostly submerged, Cracknell’s grin grew yet wider. ‘I’m a civilian, Boyce,’ he replied tauntingly. ‘You can’t give me orders, y’know!’

‘You compromise us
all
, you damnable rogue—’

A shell smacked enormously against the surface of the river, detonating an instant later. Boyce’s horse bore the brunt of the blast, a large fragment ripping open her throat.
With a choking, rattling whine, the mare sank down, her blood gushing into the Alma. Boyce, blown from his saddle, found that he was caught up in its tattered remains. Muscles screaming in protest, he fought dazedly to prevent the dying horse from collapsing on top of him and pushing him beneath the surface.

Cracknell leapt backwards through the water, his legs paddling as he tried to propel himself as far away from the explosion as possible. The notion of coming to Boyce’s aid did occur to him; he wasn’t the sort to let a man die in front of him simply because they weren’t the best of friends. But the stricken officer had attracted the attention of the enemy’s riflemen, and bullets were flicking at the water all around the carcass of the mare. Sorry, Boyce old fellow, he thought as he lunged away through the bloody current towards the opposite bank, it’s just a mite too risky.

The senior correspondent was finding the experience of battle extremely invigorating. He’d seen action before, of course, during his famous tour of the North Americas; he’d witnessed the Texas Rangers exchanging fire with the Mexican Army, and skirmishing with Comanche braves. But that was all as nothing next to this. Being there, in the heart of it, made him feel almost indescribably good, as if the fire of life crackling within him had been pumped up to a roaring inferno by a huge pair of celestial bellows. He could swear that his vision and hearing were sharper. Nothing escaped his notice; he felt powerful, completely in control, ready for whatever lay in store.

The loss of his subordinates did not overly concern him. They would either learn, and harden, or they would be left behind. Seeing them so reduced, bold young Styles especially, had proved to Cracknell that they had no hope of ever matching his mettle and resilience.

At the mercy of a treacherous river bed, many of the soldiers around him had slipped over on to their backs, or fallen forwards down unexpected slopes into deep water. Packs and uniforms, heavy enough on land, became unmanageable when waterlogged, and several privates were
being dragged under by the weight of their gear. Others were rendered immobile, cursing breathlessly as they splashed and floundered, left for the Russian snipers to pick off at leisure. Unencumbered, Cracknell was making rather more rapid progress. For a moment, he considered offering assistance to some of the more beleaguered cases; the shout of orders from the shore, however, made him realise that to get thus involved would be to miss the next stage of the attack, and so he left events to take their natural course. One could not, after all, afford to be overly sentimental about the private soldier on the field of battle.