The Street Philosopher (20 page)

The Russian lifted up his musket, the tip of the bayonet blade finding purchase in the heavy stitching of Cregg’s white cross-belt. Cregg was pressed up hard against a large boulder, his arms pinned underneath him. For approximately the eighth time that morning, he told himself that it was all over–curtains for Dan Cregg. With no last thoughts occurring, he looked into the face of his killer. The man was old, at least fifty, his beard full of grey hairs, his wrinkled skin the colour of walnuts. He had that same sour, leathery smell that all of the Russian infantry seemed to have. With a hollow cry, he drove the bayonet forward.

To the great surprise of both men, instead of sinking into the helpless Cregg, the blade bent crazily, folding almost in two. The Russian overbalanced, falling into Cregg’s lap. Freeing his arms, Cregg heaved the man away–this was not difficult, he was light as a bird–and grabbed his minié. His bayonet did not bend.

‘Did you see that, Major? Did you?’ he shouted as he rose to his feet. ‘The bastard’s blade buckled up like it was tin!’ Maynard, who was busy reloading his revolver, did not answer. Cregg went through the dead soldier’s pockets. There was nothing of interest within; the fabled vodka ration, in particular, was nowhere to be found. He swore bitterly and gave the old Russian a kick.

Of the three hundred men who had accompanied Colonel Boyce on his wrong-headed advance to the Sandbag Battery,
well over a third had already fallen. Many of Cregg’s best pals had been cut down before his eyes. He’d seen young Toby Lott, only seventeen, shot in the hip and then bayoneted as he lay screaming in the mud; Scraper Jones, a filthy fiend if ever there was one, lose his jaw to a six-pound ball, and then put a bullet in his own brain to end the torment; and the Pitt brothers, all three of them, blown into a jumble of parts by the same shell.

The contested battery had been far more heavily defended than Boyce had realised. Somehow, the companies under his command had been forced down into the Chernaya valley, a drift that Major Maynard had tried his hardest to halt and reverse; but their formation was broken. Russian reinforcements came up to meet them, and as they sought to regain their bearings, they were subjected to a brutal attack. The companies were split and scattered, and all sense of ranks, tactics and strategies lost. Men fought where they stood, thinking only of surviving the next few minutes by whatever means possible.

Cregg had found himself pushed back to a loose cluster of rocks by concentrated musket-fire, along with sixty or seventy of his comrades. There was a sizeable area of level ground in the midst of these rocks, about forty feet across–like a sort of natural fort. It was already carpeted with dead Russians, whose bloody bodies squelched underfoot as the British soldiers rushed to find cover. The sight of Major Maynard fighting alongside them had heartened him a good deal; whereas that of Boyce, off his horse by now and huddled in a rocky corner, refusing to lift arms with those he had so royally buggered, had the very opposite effect.

Another dozen Russians appeared over the top of the rocks, bawling at the top of their voices as they leapt down towards the waiting British. One fired off his musket. The ball seemed to snag Cregg’s left hand, pulling it back sharply and making him drop his minié. Knowing full well what this meant, he clutched at his wrist and forced himself to look. The hand was a bright, ugly mess, broken and twisted like a crab smashed with a hammer. One finger was gone altogether, another was little more than a shard of white bone. A panicked scream started to gather deep inside him.

It never reached his lips. The Russian who had shot him, a giant of six foot or more, struck him on the side of the head with his rifle-stock, and Cregg went down heavily. The man stepped over him, spinning the musket around expertly to ready his bayonet. Cregg barely had time to register what was happening, his mind still full of that image of his ruined hand, and the hot agony that now burned up his arm.

Then the man stumbled, and was flung violently to the ground. The sounds of Major Maynard’s shots were lost in the uproar of battle, but all three had hit home. For good measure, he put another into the Russian’s twitching body before turning towards the dazed Cregg.

‘Get that hand bound immediately, Private!’ he shouted, shaking the flattened percussion caps from his smoking revolver. ‘Use one of your comrade’s tunics–I’m sure they wouldn’t begrudge you the use of it. And be sure to bind it tightly!’

Maynard strode towards the highest of the rocks, his sword at the ready. The enemy had been driven back. They had won themselves a moment’s respite. Yet as he stood there, a breeze carried a good deal of the fog away, and he could see the next regiment of Russians starting the ascent to their position. More of the enemy had moved around to their flank, as he had guessed they would, preventing a retreat. Eleven of his men had fallen before this latest wave. They wouldn’t last much longer. Maynard didn’t feel any fear or anxiety; only an immense fatigue, and annoyance that so many good soldiers had been thrown away like waste paper. Taking off his left glove, he looked at his wedding ring. It would be pillaged from his body, and sold on in some pawn shop in Russia, or Turkey, or England, for gin money or whores. He took it off and, crouching down, dropped it into a narrow crevice in the rock.

There was a theatrical groan behind him. He turned wearily. Boyce had taken a bullet in the shoulder, which had knocked him from his horse. It was a very minor wound, one that needn’t have stopped him from fighting by Maynard’s estimation, but Boyce had laid himself out like Nelson at Trafalgar.
Lieutenant Nunn had been removed from combat to attend on his stricken Colonel, and crouched uncertainly at his side, unsure of what exactly he should be doing.

Maynard realised that it was time to ask. There might well not be another opportunity. ‘Where is Wray, Boyce? Where did you send him?’

‘I’ll thank you to remember my rank when you address me, Major Maynard!’ Boyce barked imperiously.

Maynard ignored him. He stared hard into Nunn’s eyes for a second–a look that said,
listen well to this
. ‘I saw you give him a key. What was it for?’

Boyce was looking down at his blood-stained jacket with a pained expression. ‘Captain Wray was dispatched by me to undertake a vital task on behalf of the regiment, away from the battlefield.’

‘
Vital task!
’ Maynard didn’t bother to conceal his fury. ‘What the hell can be more vital than this?’ He waved his sword at the dead heaped around them.

Boyce met his eye coldly. ‘Again, Mr Maynard, I must ask you to remember to whom you speak. The orders I choose to give are my concern, and none of yours.’

Now Maynard felt positively murderous. He paced back over the corpses to the sheltered nook where his commander had secluded himself from the action. ‘What, even when they bring about the destruction of
my
men? You will kill us all, damn it, with your wretched, arrogant idiocy!’

‘Major, this is gross insubordination!’ Boyce cried in triumphant horror, sitting upright. ‘The very minute we return to camp, sir, you shall find yourself before a court-martial!’

The Russians, a hundred yards down the slope, began their battle cry once more. ‘Here they come, lads!’ said a nearby lance-corporal as he lifted his rifle to fire. ‘Give the bleeders what for!’

Nunn shifted apprehensively, checking his revolver.

‘And to top it all,’ Maynard continued, ‘you won’t even draw your sword beside them. You won’t even fight with your own soldiers! You claim honour, Boyce, but I say you have none! None at all!’

‘What, pray, would you know of honour, Maynard?’ Boyce
sneered. ‘Men like you, crawling from your hovels and cottages, joining Her Majesty’s Army as if it were a savings bank, or a warehouse, or a cloth factory! Working your way through the ranks like clerks seeking promotion to management! You have as much understanding of true military honour as has an ape of the Indus!’

Maynard drew breath for his reply.

Cregg had bound what was left of his hand in a long strip torn from the tunic of a dead corporal from the 55th. The pain was unlike anything he had ever known. It sat across his chest like a saddle, churned in his stomach, and blazed behind his eyes. Leaning dizzily against a boulder, he could hear the two officers’ vicious argument, and the screaming Russians drawing steadily nearer. The British soldiers were firing, but sparingly; many were down to their last few bullets. He knew that when the enemy arrived, he would not be able to resist, and would be dispatched easily. His only hope was to make a break for the Allied lines–to run away, risking the muskets on their flank and the random fire of the artillery. Dan Cregg wasn’t proud. If this was the price of survival, he would pay it gladly.

With difficulty, the injured hand hugged in his armpit, he staggered out on to the plain. The rain was easing off, and he realised that the fog, disturbed by the sea breeze, was gradually lifting. Cregg could now see the full hellishness of the slope around them; and also, up near the British pickets, the several battalions of redcoats that were advancing out in long, loose rows. They were already firing on the flanking Russians, breaking their positions and driving them back.

‘Major!’ the private yelled joyfully, ducking back amongst the rocks. ‘Major, gerrover ’ere!’

Major Maynard appeared at his side a moment later. ‘Heaven be praised! Salvation is at hand, Cregg. And about bloody time.’

Cregg looked around at the valley behind them. The enemy continued their slow charge. They were still a good forty yards from the rocks. Then the fog continued to drift away on the shifting wind, exposing thousands more enemy soldiers standing
ready in the valley below–literally thousands. It was as if every man and boy in Russia was massed against them.

‘Enough of this,’ declared Maynard, before raising his voice to a roar. ‘Retreat! Retreat, open order! Back to the pickets, men! Back to the reinforcements!’ He regarded Boyce coldly for a moment. ‘Lieutenant Nunn, assist the Colonel. Ensure that he reaches safety.’

‘Damn sight more’n the bastard deserves,’ Cregg muttered.

The rising fog had cleared a long ridge of raised ground on the Sebastopol side of the Chernaya valley. Standing along this ridge were the guns that had been pounding away at them so steadily, which were now afforded clear sight of their targets for the first time that morning. Cregg saw their crews taking aim, and the plumes of white smoke as they fired; and a second later, heard the reports roll across the landscape. He opened his mouth for a warning shout, but it was too late.

Several of the shells buried themselves deep in the ground before exploding, throwing up enormous gouts of earth and splintered rock. Cregg was knocked over, falling on his smashed hand. He yelped in agony, doubling up and then kicking his legs out as hard as he could, a heavy shower of mud raining down on him. Forcing himself up on to his knees, he retched and brought up his morning biscuit, gasping in the smoky air and trying to blink the stinging tears out of his eyes. The Russians were almost at the hollow, and would be on him in moments. He looked around quickly, preparing to flee towards the pickets.

Fresh casualties lay all about, torn apart and flung around by the artillery fire, and then half-buried by the tons of flying mud. And there, not five yards from where he crouched, was Major Maynard. He was on his back, staring up at the heavy rain-clouds above, his lips moving soundlessly. His trousers were ripped, the tattered remnants black with blood. One of his legs was covered by the disturbed earth; Cregg could see that the other was attached only by a few fine shreds of flesh. His arms were thrown out, one hand still gripping the hilt of his sword, the other open and gloveless, the fingers curling slowly.

The road running along the base of the Chernaya valley was strangely empty, all traffic having halted ahead of the massed Russian attack. Like all of the peninsula’s roads, it was little more than a dirt cart-track, its ruts and grooves turned to a treacherous mire by the heavy rains. The
Courier
team soon found that the going was easier on the slippery grass verges than on the road itself. Beside them ran the muddy river, bloated by the constant rainfall. More than this they could not see. The fog had billowed back up the length of the valley, smothering everything in its grey haze.

After about half a mile, they found themselves passing through a village of squat white houses, all of which appeared to be deserted. Looters had been busy. Doors hung splintered in their frames, and windows, empty of their shutters, gaped blackly open like the eye-sockets of skulls. A mill-wheel was turning slowly and haltingly in the lazy waters of the Chernaya, suggesting not life and everyday labour, but rather ghostly absence and incipient decay.

Few words were exchanged as they made their way through this bleak place. Kitson glanced frequently at Styles, but the illustrator remained blank-faced, expressionless. It still seemed impossible. Their young artist had killed–had taken up a stone and knocked a boy’s skull in with it. Regardless of the circumstances, a crucial boundary had been crossed. One thing was certain: he now had to be sent back to England with all haste. Away from this blighted land,
safely at home, there was a chance that he might recover, and rid himself of the peculiar desolation that ate away at him. But he had to depart the Crimea directly.

Soon after leaving the cave, Cracknell had imparted their course of action. They would follow the river, staying on its south bank, for three hours. This should carry them far enough inland, he said, to get them well behind the Allied lines, and past the steepest of the ravines. They would then turn away from the valley, head in the rough direction of Sebastopol, and thus be back in the besieging camps well before nightfall.

Somewhere, however, in the fog, the mud and the ceaseless, chilling rain, this simple plan went awry. The river seemed to fork, and the valley with it. Cracknell made a choice, striding out in front to lead the way; but the sub-valley he selected, rather than rising up to the plateau, grew increasingly deep and rocky. The tributary of the Chernaya beside which they walked became more fast-flowing, rushing in diagonals between swirling, foaming pools. Trees started to appear, and before long the
Courier
team were walking through a dense, silvery wood. Autumn leaves floated down through the fog, gathering in drifts between the stones.

Seeing his opportunity, Kitson hurried forward to Cracknell’s side, leaving Styles some distance behind them. His voice hushed, he spoke of the need to remove the illustrator from the war-zone as soon as possible.

Cracknell turned to him irritably. ‘Kitson, what the deuce are you on about?’ He pushed aside some low-hanging branches, scattering droplets of dew. ‘He did what was necessary. What you or I should have been ready to do. That soldier would have given us away–we’d be prisoners by now, or worse.’

Kitson nodded. He had not been so foolish as to expect an immediate consensus, despite Cracknell’s alarm in the cave. ‘I understand that, sir, but we need to consider the effect his actions might have on his mind. He is not a soldier.’

‘
Effect?
’ Cracknell said scornfully, screwing up his face in disbelief. ‘What the bloody hell d’ye mean, Thomas? He is a
man
, isn’t he?’

‘Mr Cracknell, Robert Styles is an artist.’ Kitson grew angry at his senior’s wilful incomprehension. ‘An
artist
. He trained in the Royal Academy drawing schools. And he just killed a boy with a rock. Do you not think this
at all
significant?’

Cracknell paused. His eyes held a trace of amusement. ‘Good Lord, Thomas, you are fractious today. Is a mutiny brewing, I wonder?’

Kitson ignored this. ‘It will be on our heads, sir, if we do not act.’

Putting up his collar, Cracknell looked to the tree trunks ahead. ‘We’ll discuss this later, back at the camps,’ he said with firm finality. ‘Now, we must press on. There is still some distance to go.’

Styles hopped across the stones some yards back, absorbed in his own thoughts. He had found the experience of killing a confusing one. It was Religion’s greatest sin, the sin of Cain; yet it had actually been rather easy. No thunderclaps or lightning, no horrible shadow of damnation falling over one’s soul–all one had to do was pick up a rock and strike with it, much as one might chop a log, or poke a fire. Although it had been the decision of an instant, Styles found that he was not surprised or dismayed by what he had done. As they crept out of the ravine, and made their way along the valley, he had searched for feelings of remorse inside himself, but as yet had failed to find any. All he could think of was Cracknell, reeling in surprise, hand over his stupid mouth, his greasy skin saved by someone he had maligned so ruthlessly–and falsely–for his cowardice.

In short, he felt as if he had finally managed to prove himself. He had shown quite incontrovertibly that he was as capable, as brave as the wretched senior correspondent. How might Mrs Boyce’s views of the pair of them change, he dared to wonder, when she discovered what had happened there in the cave? Cracknell’s dastardly slander would surely be exposed for what it was.

But this thought led him to a sharp recollection of their encounter out by the pickets a few hours earlier; of the awful antipathy with which she had attempted to dismiss him from
her presence. Grimacing, he tried vainly to clear this annihilating, hopeless memory from his mind.

After another half an hour’s trudging through the fog, a break in the trees appeared before them. This clearing contained an expansive lawn, a little overgrown but properly seeded and bordered. He heard Kitson calling to Cracknell, off in the fog somewhere up ahead. Styles knew that Kitson had been disturbed by what had happened in the cave, and wished to have him sent away. This was not surprising. Since the Alma, Styles had nursed growing doubts about Thomas Kitson. The man was not his friend, as he had claimed. A similar impulse may have brought them both to the Crimea, but no true kinship existed between them. How could it? He possessed an absolute dedication to the task before them–whereas Kitson had only his endless caveats, queries and reservations. He had overestimated the junior correspondent. The man lacked spirit, and had no place in a war.

As he wandered across the lawn, a large shape slid slowly from the murk before him. At first, he had thought it to be a rock formation, or a particularly close grouping of trees, but as he reached the rest of the
Courier
team he saw that it was neither.

The villa was low and wide, built from light Crimean stone in a simple approximation of the Palladian style. It was two storeys high, with a pediment before the doors, supported by six thick pillars. Most of its tall windows had been smashed, the jagged holes revealing only darkness within. Even in the fog, it was obvious that the location had been carefully chosen for the concealment provided by the nearby woods.

Cracknell whistled. ‘Quite a pile. You’d think it would be on the Allied maps. Come on, let’s give ourselves a tour.’ He made for the doors.

Kitson did not follow. ‘Mr Cracknell, should we not exercise a little caution?’

Cracknell turned back, his plump cheeks creased by a sarcastic grin that made Styles wince with loathing. ‘
Caution
, Thomas? How unlike you, my friend! Don’t you want to take shelter from this accursed rain? Lay a fire, perhaps, and dry out your coat?’

‘Of course I do, sir,’ Kitson replied, ‘but what if anyone should be in there?’ He looked briefly at Styles.

The illustrator saw apprehension in his face–not due to the threat of the enemy, of Cossack raiders or Russian infantry, but of him, of Robert Styles, of what further acts of violence he might commit that day. Suddenly, Styles realised that he had, in the space of an hour, become a killer of men, a repugnant brute. He looked down at the grass, a perplexing, powerful shame spreading through him. Lucid memories returned to his mind; the way the Russian’s skull had caved in beneath his blow; the tiny glimpse he had caught of the eyeball rolling upwards; the fitful shudder of the dead man’s limbs. These images and sensations, he realised with a mounting panic, were now etched on to his very soul.

Cracknell let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘Looking on the sunny side of the wall as ever, eh, Kitson? The place is quite deserted, surely you can see that. This is a chance for a bit of exploration, a bit of bloody adventure! Is that not why you left the comfort of your picture salons–of your art criticism?’ He laughed harshly. ‘And anyway, should we encounter some nasty villain within, young Robert here has shown himself extremely able to deal with such dangers, has he not?’

As ever, the senior correspondent’s good humour had an aggressive element to it; and the comradely slap he then delivered to the illustrator’s back was a little firmer than it needed to be. Styles, lost in remembrance of the Russian’s broken skull, of the brittle cracking of his bone, could only mumble wordlessly in response.

A stone coat of arms above the villa’s doors contained the double-headed Imperial eagle. This secluded house, Kitson thought, was the property of an important person indeed. The cavernous hall beyond was dark and smelled strangely sepulchral, the odour of candle-wax hanging heavily in the stale air. A faint glow seemed to emanate from the paler sections of the patterned marble floor. Empty niches lined the walls, a single broken Caesar all that remained of their
occupants. Tides of brown silt had accumulated on the sills of the smashed windows. There were no signs of life. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Kitson saw that the floor was scuffed and covered with a web of cracks, as if many dirty boots and a number of heavy objects had moved back and forth across it, without the usual protective precautions having been taken.

‘A speedy exit,’ said Cracknell, his voice loud in the hall’s stillness. ‘And a careless one.’

Kitson tried to tread softly on the fractured marble slabs, but the senior correspondent was intent on demonstrating his heroic indifference as to what–or who–their intrusion into this place might disturb. His steps echoed around the hall as he marched intrepidly across it.

‘Kitchens are what we need,’ he pronounced, selecting one of the passageways that led off into the rest of the villa. ‘Over here.’

Cracknell led Kitson and Styles along a dingy corridor panelled with black wood. It was covered with relief carvings of the beasts of the Russian forest, represented in an exaggerated, folk-tale style. Most, for some reason, had been left unmolested. Bears and boars wrestled around archways; snarling wolves crouched beside doors; round-faced owls perched above window frames. This corridor took them past a succession of grand saloons, each one thoroughly defaced. Paper peeled from walls in long, sagging strips, and rotting carpets were littered with fragments of broken furniture.

Eventually, in one of the building’s most far-flung corners, they found a spiral staircase made from roughly hewn stone. At its bottom was an enormous vaulted kitchen. The room was filled with the lapping sound of rain falling on leaves, its high windows, all shattered, showing only flat greyness outside. Again, destruction was everywhere. It had been completely ransacked; shelves had been torn down, dressers and tables overturned, china ground to chips, copper pots bashed out of shape.

A number of heavy doors were set into the walls. The majority had been staved in or pulled from their hinges, revealing the looted pantries or store-rooms on the other
side. Kitson noticed, however, that a couple had been sturdily reinforced, managing to withstand what had clearly been determined attempts to breach them.

As they walked deeper into the ruined kitchen, a small horde of rats wriggled away noisily through the debris; Kitson caught sight of several thick pink tails. The numbness that had carried him through the morning was fading fast, and the touch of his rain-sodden garments against his skin was starting to have an icy bite. He looked towards the large fireplace and suggested they get a fire going.

The
Courier
team were dragging the remains of a bench to the hearth when they heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps somewhere above them.

Cracknell set down his part of the bench. ‘We have company,’ he said, listening hard. ‘There’s several of ’em. Four–wait, five.’

The footsteps grew louder. ‘Christ,’ muttered Kitson, ‘they’re coming this way.’

All three had frozen, alive with excitement, the sense of crisis prompting them to forget their differences once more. There was no other way out of the kitchen. They had to face these people or hide. The proclivity for violence that Styles had demonstrated in the cave had deserted him; he now looked positively aghast at the prospect of further confrontation. The newspapermen were exhausted, unarmed and outnumbered. Even Cracknell saw at once which choice to make.

‘Those barrels,’ he said, pointing to a heap of empty wine butts on the far side of the room, next to a long iron oven. They hurried over and ducked behind them.

Soon afterwards, the voices arrived at the kitchen staircase–they were talking in English. Cracknell promptly started to stand. Kitson, recognising one of them, pulled him back down with all his strength.

‘Must I hide even from my own people, then?’ the senior correspondent asked indignantly.

‘
Wray
,’ Kitson hissed.

Cracknell fell quiet, and peered out from their hiding place with keen curiosity. Many of the wine butts were falling
apart, affording the
Courier
team a good view of the room through their loosened slats. Captain Wray, they saw, was accompanied by two corporals from the 99th and a pair of men in civilian clothes. Both these civilians were grubby and unshaven, but had an odd air of refinement about them. One was telling Wray about the villa’s history and the circumstances of its construction. A slight accent in his speech told Kitson that he was Russian, and of the highest social rank; the other man, whose demeanour was subtly deferential, was a servant of some kind. The redcoats were very much on their guard, miniés ready in their hands, scanning the shadows.