He took one of her hands and raised it to his lips. “I salute you, ma’am. You are a remarkable woman.” He paused, turning to see the reason for her rising color and intense interest in something behind him, and saw a young military captain he did not recognize at first glance. Peering with narrowed eyes across the brilliant sunshine, he took in the hollowed yellow face, burning eyes and sagging shoulders.
“My dear sir, are you quite mad?” he exclaimed. “You are in no fit state to walk off this ship, Captain…”
“Esterly,” said Hugo, pulling up short at the sight of Victoria. “Good day, ma’am.”
“Good day,” replied Victoria, shocked at his appearance and in complete agreement with Captain Porchester. But as she was about to repeat his advice she caught back the words, remembering Hugo’s dislike of being treated as an invalid. It must be bad enough knowing he was regarded, with unsympathetic masculine justice, as a target for ribaldry, without having the misfortune to encounter her the minute he appeared on deck. Unlike the men, however, her own gratifying lack of aversion to the sea did not prevent her from feeling extremely sorry for those unfortunate enough to suffer in that way. Constant sickness during her pregnancy had seen to that.
The sea captain was not as sensitive. “You can barely stand, man. I insist on sending for a stretcher. There have been enough mishaps already.”
“No, sir, I am completely capable,” Hugo insisted.
“I am captain of this ship, sir. You will do as I say.”
Victoria put her hand on the older man’s arm. “I think Captain Esterly would not put anything at risk. He is a very sensible man, I assure —”
“What is amiss?” Charles came from behind the wheel-house and summed up the little scene immediately.
“We are discussing the possibility of this gentleman being taken ashore on a stretcher,” said Captain Porchester.
Charles ignored Hugo and spoke directly to the man standing beside his wife. “None of my officers goes ashore unless he can take himself,” he said tartly, as if Hugo were trying to malinger. “We are going to a war, not a convalescent home. You have my permission to proceed, Captain Esterly,” he added over his shoulder. “Come, my dear. Captain Porchester has kindly invited us to lunch aboard. We shall find the harbor less congested this afternoon.”
He held out his arm, and she went across to him, conscious of Hugo’s careful progress down the Jacob’s ladder. Please do not let him slip, she prayed.
It was mid-afternoon when they were rowed ashore, and the heat was intense as they stepped onto the quay. It seemed as congested as it had looked all day. As far as the eye could see there were milling soldiers in scarlet, blue or rifle-green jackets, mixed with Greeks and Turks in rags or exotic boleros and baggy trousers. Cavalrymen were accoutering horses, who were being driven mad by swarms of flies that settled on their heads like moving masks; infantrymen were unpiling arms with more haste than care; red-faced artillerymen manhandled guns into positions where they could be harnessed to the horses; others piled cannon balls and shells in great mounds as they were unloaded from small boats.
Victoria was glad of Charles to guide her through the bedlam to where a trooper waited with Renata and Caliban already saddled, but it proved impossible to move off for another hour, until the entire detachment was mounted and formed up. The sight of two squadrons of Hussars on the march was familiar to Victoria, but never had she ridden at the head of them as she did now. Charles helped her mount, then led her across to the long column headed by Hugo on his famous horse, Monty. Their eyes met as she passed him. This moment would have been supreme if it had been at his side that she rode, and her look told him so.
Charles gave the order to move off, and they began their ride to camp through the narrow uneven streets thronged with inquisitive peasants who gaped at the sight of these splendid men, half of whom were riding horses just now provided by the remount officer to replace those who were lost at sea. Against the English horses they looked short, rough-coated and poor, but the loss in animals had been so severe throughout the entire force, the remount department had been forced to buy them where they could from dealers who knew they could charge twice their worth.
The early twilight had begun when they reached the campsite, a huge open plain beside a lake where thousands of English and Turkish soldiers were already under canvas and going about the usual chores of setting guards, throwing out cavalry piquets and eating a meal of unappetizing quality. To Victoria it represented real campaigning for the first time.
The ground was covered in bell tents in neat rows, with ropes spread out all around them. Rifles were piled in pyramids every twenty yards or so, and fires burned outside the mess tents, casting picturesque shadows over the canvas and the industrious soldiers as they went about their duty. It seemed to go on for a mile or more, and the thought of becoming a part of it made Victoria throb with excitement.
The excitement began to dim when it was discovered that all their own tents and equipment, which were following in bullock carts, had gone astray somewhere along the route, including their rations for the night. They could do nothing but remain in their saddles until the carts showed up, an extremely heavy dew making it impossible to sit on the ground. The officers — Hugo and a more senior captain called Foster, Cornets McKay and Lancing and Charles — organized the watering of the horses at the lake, leaving Victoria alone on the open area designated for their tents.
She was not alone for long. Her cousin Charlotte’s husband, Captain Jenson, appeared out of the near darkness and grinned at her surprise.
“We have been here two days. The news of your arrival reached us this morning. I have been waiting for you to ride in.”
“How lovely it is to meet you here,” she cried in delight at encountering someone she knew in this foreign spot. “We are in a fix. Our tents are lost — gone who knows where — and dinner is far away. I am only thankful Charles and I had luncheon on board; the others had none.”
He laughed in his usual happy manner. “If that is all your trouble, ma’am, you are fortunate. My tent and dinner are yours to share. By George, this will be in my letter to Charlotte tonight.”
“And I shall also write,” she declared. “News from me that you are hale and hearty will be more reassuring than your letters, which she will believe are couched in terms more pleasing than truthful. As to your invitation, I accept, I accept! You are quite the most welcome gentleman I have encountered today.”
Without Captain Jenson she would have spent a miserable evening, for the wagons were not located until ten, and the soldiers set up the tents in darkness, aided in their work by pretending the tent pegs were the heads of the Turks who had gone astray with the baggage. In consequence, the detachment of Hussars turned in with empty stomachs, although its officers were all entertained by infantry officers, who hospitably shared dinner with them, including bottles of tolerable wine they had been swift to buy in Varna during the two days they had spent in the area, knowing there would soon be none to be had.
Victoria passed her first night under canvas full of a strange kind of restlessness. The air of unreality that had hung over the meal in Captain Jenson’s tent in company with Charles and two infantry officers persisted now that she was lying on a folding bed in the large tent Charles had provided for their use. He had said hardly a word to her since their arrival, too angry over the loss of the equipment to be even impersonally polite, and now he was asleep in the companion bed, leaving her awake with her thoughts.
How far removed she was from her previous life. Lying here surrounded by several thousand soldiers, she was only one hundred miles from the enemy. The voyage had been a suspended existence between one life and the other; tonight, she was part of a war. From now on she would spend each day with the sounds of trumpets, rifles and thundering hooves. She would grow used to eating off a wooden chest within the sloping canvas walls of the tent and drinking wine beneath the swinging lantern on the tent pole, while the sounds of
a military encampment went on around her. She would push open her tent flap with an experienced hand and learn to hold her skirts free of the dew-laden floor. In time, the sounds of the night would not keep her awake. Dogs howled in the distance — or were they wolves? — and insects set up an orchestra of uneasy notes. The horses moved restlessly, blowing through their nostrils and stamping to shake off the dew that fell like heavy rain. Soldiers coughed with consumptive distress, and the guards moved along their patrol routes with low-voiced conversation.
Midnight, and she was still not asleep. The dew that had settled on the tent created a chill inside that made her curl tighter beneath her blankets and slip down until the tip of her nose was covered. Finally, she accepted that sleep would not come until she allowed herself to think about Hugo lying in the next tent.
He was her reason for being here. To be near him day after day was all her life. To share each alien experience, to exclaim over, question and enthuse about each aspect of the campaign with him was an aching desire within her. There was so much she wished to know, so much she longed to discuss, so much she yearned to tell him, yet she must lie here in dutiful neglect beside his brother. But it was not that that kept her awake. On the ship he might as well have been still in Ireland for all she had seen of him, yet today he had been there all the time, looking so ill, yet going about his duty with dogged determination and refusing to acknowledge her presence by the slightest sign. Apart from his greeting on the deck of Sirocco, when he could not avoid speaking to her, Hugo had behaved as though they had never met — as though she did not exist. Tonight, she had never been so near him, yet so far away.
All the next day troops marched in, as transports brought them from Scutari, and the camp swelled. Rations were somehow found for the men, who had gone a whole day with only a mug of tea to warm their stomachs, and the officers descended on Varna for chickens, vegetables and wine to grace their makeshift tables. There were plenty of eggs and fresh fruit for those able to pay the price, and the officers could. But the soldiers were adept at beating down the prices and stuffed their pockets full of apricots, greengages and plums, or returned to camp with a watermelon or a great scarlet pumpkin, tied in a handkerchief.
Victoria could not tear herself away from watching the road, which grew dustier and more indistinct as the day wore on. Long snakes of scarlet-coated soldiers wound their way up from the harbor in a never-ending tail, until it seemed to her there could be no more — and still they came. The tents now stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, and the air was filled with a steady hum that never abated. At last, toward evening, her tired eyes saw the glitter of sun on harness and the blue jackets of Hussars. The second detachment of the regiment was now marching in with a small figure in cream and brown alongside them.
Letty was as delighted to see her friend as Victoria was to see her, and they fell upon each other with embraces and eager questions. The new arrivals had been caught up in the confusion at Scutari, disembarking and embarking again the same day. Letty described the scene with lively humor, but it had not really been amusing. Several horses had been lost when they jumped into the sea with fright and swam in the wrong direction until they drowned; Lieutenant Lord Dovedale was suffering from a concussion, after being thrown from his horse that was too much of a thoroughbred to take kindly to Turkish bullock carts; and three soldiers’ wives had vanished into Constantinople, vowing they had had enough of campaigning. The ship had sailed without them.
“If you only knew how I have longed for your company,” declared Letty.
“As I have for yours,” Victoria replied happily. “Now you are here we shall be constant companions.”
But it was in Hugo’s tent that the Markhams ate dinner that evening. Charles would not have them as guests in his home in England and saw no reason for changing his ruling.
Early the following morning, orders came in for the cavalry to strike camp and march to Devna, a village some twenty miles upcountry, at first light the next day, and Victoria was awakened by Zarina shortly after 3:00 A.M. in preparation for the march. As they left soon after five, Victoria could not help reflecting that it was just as well they were moving, since six regiments of French infantry had arrived in Varna, besides three detachments of English Rifles and the major part of the 17th Lancers, who had also sailed from Portsmouth.
The day was one she would remember as her first real march, for they did not arrive at the new camp until well after noon — the longest time she had ever spent in the saddle. For the greater part of the journey she was too fascinated by the countryside to feel tired. Their winding dust track led them over gentle hills colored by wild flowers, through woodlands that gave relief from the beating heat of the sun and across plains of such rural tranquility it seemed wicked to fill them with war-like horsemen.
Victoria rode at the head of the column with Charles but sought Letty’s company at each halt, when the nature of the march made it natural for all the officers to drop to the ground in a common group to eat breakfast or slake their thirsts. The two ladies were very popular and had a gay time with young blades like Hector Balesworth and Harry Edmunds, who threw Victoria tragic glances every so often from beneath his lashes. Hugo was with the advance party — probably with the deliberate intent of Charles, thought Victoria — and she had no sight of him until they reached their destination.
Another wide plain of lush meadows and a plentiful supply of water looked very attractive to the soldiers and the two officers’ wives who arrived exhausted by the excessive heat and fatigue of the march, but it was paradise to those women of the regiment who were forced to follow their trooper husbands on foot, with an occasional lift on one of the baggage wagons. Trooper Pitchley saw the state they were in and knew his Maria could never have stood such conditions with the baby inside her. Perhaps it was all to the good that she had not been allowed to come. He could not write to her, for he had no address. All he could do was trust the Almighty to see her right.
Life settled into a routine, and the troopers made themselves as comfortable as possible. Day by day detachments marched in from Varna, until the Light Cavalry Brigade was complete.
One day there was a great stir as the notorious Earl of Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade, rode into camp and, with the overbearing military eccentricity for which he was renowned, decided to change the position of all the tents — not once but twice — until everyone was hot and resentful and at least a mile further from the water than they had been before. From that day he made a nuisance of himself wherever he went by insisting on parades and reviews, immaculate uniforms and the severest punishment for the slightest offense. He also indulged his favorite sport, officer baiting.
Victoria became something of a mother-confessor to the cavalry officers. Not a day passed that some subaltern or junior captain did not come to her tent or accompany her on a ride over the hills and spoke bitterly of the unfairness of their commander. One had been publicly reprimanded before the entire regiment for being seen in camp in a forage cap instead of a shako. Another had been ordered on a dangerous patrol with the remains of fever still on him and told to be a man. Yet another had been refused permission to leave camp until further notice because he had had the temerity to point out that the temperature was one hundred degrees and he felt his men could be excused wearing fur-lined pelisses on parade. Lord Cardigan stormed, penalized the captain, and the men sweltered in their full-dress uniforms to satisfy their commander’s whims.
Victoria met this handsome, egocentric major general at dinner one night with Colonel Rayne and thoroughly disliked him. Charming and persuasive with ladies, Lord Cardigan did not know he was talking to someone who distrusted older men who flattered her with a silken tongue. He was often to be found riding past her tent to inquire how she was, and she was thankful when he was sent with a large detachment to ascertain the position of the enemy. News had been received that the Turks had raised the siege of Silestria without help, and the Russian
s had retreated to a position unknown. The Anglo-British force surrounding Varna sat and waited to hear what they must do next, while the politicians and generals tried to conceal their embarrassment. The armies could not be sent home again, yet they could not sit at Varna indefinitely.
June passed into July, and the temperature soared to one hundred and ten. Victoria and Letty began taking a daily ride in the coolness of early morning before breakfast, accompanied by any officers who felt so inclined. It was on one such ride that they came across Hugo exercising Monty in the hills above the camp. Harry Edmunds hailed him, and he trotted across with reluctance when he saw the ladies.
He looked better than when he had left the ship, but Victoria remembered him at Wychbourne and knew the voyage had taken its toll of his vitality. In all the time they had been at Devna he had been merely polite. She had received stiff salutes in passing, brief greetings at dinners to which they were both invited and adamant refusals to enter into conversation with her at any time. For six weeks she had watched him go about his duties meticulously, knowing Charles was watching every movement for the slightest fault. He had taken patrols during the day and at night, mounted piquets, drilled his troop strictly by the book, inspected horses, written reports, administered discipline…and scrupulously kept his distance from his major’s wife. He was often in the company of the Markhams, yet moved away when Victoria approached; he rode with his brother officers, yet never joined the young men accompanying the two ladies on their morning exercise. This time he was trapped, and the fact was in the depths of his eyes as he bade Letty and Victoria an unsmiling good morning.
“We’re glad to come across you, for we are unusually short of escorts this morning,” Letty cried saucily. “We are used to six, at least and are wondering what we can have done to make everyone desert us.”
Scarlet Shadows Page 27
