This was as far as he could go. He had done his best. No man could be expected to do more, surely. Unashamed, he lay on the grass and cried out from the torment of his wounds. High above him a bird was still singing its heart out at the beauty of the morning.
And so ended twenty minutes in Hugo Esterly’s short life.
*
The crowd on the hillside watched in stricken silence as the entire Light Brigade vanished into the smoke at the end of the valley. It had been exciting to see them set off like mechanical toys down below, but the thrill of pride had changed to horror when a supply officer cried out, “My God, they are going the wrong way. Those men are going to charge a full battery of cannon!”
Indeed, the disastrous truth was soon all too obvious. Someone had made a tragic blunder and sent them galloping at the wrong guns. From their advantage of height the spectators could see the tiny gun emplacements that had been captured from the Turks that morning and were now only lightly guarded by Russian infantry, but as the bright ranks had advanced down the valley, the expected sweep to the right did not come. The Light Brigade had been sent to attack the wrong target!
The chatter, the excited murmuring died away, leaving only the faint echo of drumming hoofbeats to float upward before smoke hid the regiments from view. The Heavy Brigade, which was some distance behind in support of their comrades, dropped from a trot to a walk, then halted. The order to retire was given, and they returned, knowing no one — nothing — could prevent what was about to happen.
For ten minutes or so it almost seemed that five regiments had vanished from the face of the earth, until sharp eyes made out tiny stumbling figures emerging from the point whence they had disappeared and realized that the scattering of dismounted men was all that remained of the Light Brigade.
The women, wives of the Lancers, Light Dragoons and Hussars who had been longing to go into action, took it very quietly. Those who gave way to tears did so in silence. The others clutched their shawls around them, shivering in the warm sunshine, stared down into the valley with set faces. They had never before seen an entire brigade go down within ten minutes and could not accept the fact.
Victoria knew her life would never be the same again. What she had just witnessed was beyond credibility, beyond humanity. As she watched, more figures were emerging into the sunshine with the disorientation of pain, some leaning on each other, some crawling like the beasts of the fields. It was terrible, it was depraved, it was obscene. She had lived this nightmare once at Wychbourne, after Hugo had spoken of such things, and woken to find the deer park tranquil and unspoiled. From this one she would never escape.
Time passed.
“I have to go down there, Letty,” she said tonelessly. “We both have to.”
The girl beside her had grown old within twenty minutes. Did she look the same way? A glance was all that passed between them before they mounted and turned the heads of their horses down toward Kadikoi. They set out at a walk, hesitant, reluctant, frightened, yet their pace quickened as they covered the several miles, as if their reserve of subconscious courage overrode their frailty.
Victoria had only one thought in her mind. It had been there since the first hoof moved in that charge and was pushing at her heart, her head and her stomach. God give me the strength to face what I have to face, she prayed as they reached the approaches of the valley and rode into the aftermath of battle.
Confusion was total. Regiments were mixed together, distinguishable only by their headgear, and she looked desperately for the fur busbies of the Hussars. Down here it was hot, the high hills throwing back the sun into the hollow below, and the air was filled with the stench of war.
Abandoning Renata, Victoria began picking her way through stretchers, medical boxes, kneeling attendants, survivors, her eyes seeing nothing but faces — only faces. Horses were being led away through the confusion by men she did not bother to scrutinize. He would not be among them. Limping, hopping troopers were assisted with difficulty through chaos, but they did not have a captain’s knots on their sleeves, and she walked past. Her feet took her over the soldiers who lay masked by blood, for none had the right build, the rich brown hair or enough gold lace on his jacket to be the one she sought.
She walked alone, not knowing or caring that Letty had gone her own way. Her riding skirt clung to her hot damp legs, forcing her to hold it up higher as she continued her search. There, there was a Hussar busby lying on the grass beside an officer! She pushed past a torn gray horse and through several Lancers sitting together slaking their thirsts, seeing none of them. It was not him!
“Clear a way there! Stand back… Stretcher bearer, over here…water, someone give me water…leave him, Corporal, there is nothing more we can do…where are the bandages? They cannot have run out…this man will have to have his leg off…get this man off me, for Christ’s sake. He has just died…make way. Make way there!”
Victoria was oblivious of the words around her. Surely she had not looked at every man. There were others coming in all the time. Was that a captain’s sleeve behind the cart? Yes, but the officer lying so still and white was a Light Dragoon. She must turn and search again. Had she really looked at every face?
“Mrs. Stanford, ma’am, we’ve been looking for you. Mrs. Stanford? Mrs. Stanford! Are you all right, ma’am?”
Victoria turned blank eyes to the trooper.
“The colonel is in the hospital tent. His foot is crushed and he has a sword cut on his arm, but he’s all right. I’ll take you to him. This is no place for a lady, ma’am.”
Awkwardly, the lad put his arm behind her to coax her away from the frightful scene. She went because he might be there with Charles. It was a long walk — the length of a nightmare. Her husband was lying on the grass outside the tent. Inside, the doctors were performing the indescribable rituals of their trade with a glass of brandy as their only anesthetic.
Charles presented a neat appearance after some she had seen. Blood had dried rust-red on his sleeve, and his left foot stuck out at a stomach-crawling angle. His face was pale and patchily blackened by smoke, which emphasized the colorless quality of shocked eyes. Apart from that, the gold-encrusted jacket was neatly buttoned to the neck and his busby still sat at the correct angle on his head.
His right hand went out to her, and she took it, hardly noticing its warmth against her ice-cold fingers. Automatically she knelt beside him, and he spoke with unusual emotion.
“They are saying it was a mistake, Victoria. I can tell you it was the most tragic mistake known to warfare.”
His words relit the picture in her mind as those small galloping figures were led past the right sweep straight into the guns.
“It is rumored the Lancers are finished, and the Dragoons have no more than a dozen left. A regiment of twelve men! As for mine, I dare not inquire.” He remained quiet for a minute or two, staring at the late afternoon sky. “I think I have never been so tired. You cannot know what a comfort it is to have you here. I had not thought you could be so courageous…so loyal.”
His voice died away as his eyes closed again, but the hand remained clasping hers until they came to tend his wounds. The doctor’s swift comforting smile went through her, and she walked on cramped painful legs among those lying around the makeshift hospital, lifting the blankets even from still, shrouded forms so that no face was overlooked. He was not there.
When she arrived back in the valley the scene had hardly changed; men were still willing their shattered bodies to cover a few more yards to safety. Each one of the faces that stared back at her was the wrong one. The Lancer just coming in could not be him; the corpse across an officer’s charger that was being led by a trooper of Hussars was that of Cornet Balesworth, the champion shot of the regiment. The man without a jacket and covered with blood from a shoulder wound was too lightly built. They were shooting horses all around her.
Breaking into a stumbling run, her feet took her over the ground their hooves had covered that day.
The first part was rough and uneven, forcing her to lift her skirts high and stride out over the humps, then the valley smoothed into regular grassland.
“God bless you, ma’am,” cried the stumbling, bleeding man holding up his arms as she approached. She paused, but he was a trooper of Dragoons, and she walked past.
The valley was vast; it had not looked so big from above. She turned left toward a blue-uniformed figure and walked with increased pace. It was impossible to see his sleeves, for he was lying face downward and. doubled up in agony. Shaking hands turned his head. He had only one eye, and the other that stared sightlessly up at her was brown. The body just beyond was already being tenderly straightened by a woman who rocked back and forth singing a keening song. There was no need to approach.
“Jeannie? Is that you, Jeannie?” asked a Dragoon in his delirium as she drew near but received no answer.
Her steps quickened. There was a long way to go to the next one. She reached the bundle that had been a Hussar. It had no face, but a sergeant’s braid on the sleeve told her what she wanted to know. She was running now, past women who were sitting like statues beside their dead husbands and past soldiers crying unashamedly as they took personal effects from beloved brothers and lifetime comrades. Her feet flew over the grass that was littered with the debris of battle, going faster and faster as shots rang in her ears to signify that yet another beast would feel no more pain.
Up ahead was a Hussar officer lying against a brown horse that was rigid in death. She could see the brave gold lace of his jacket, the sword still in his hand, the brown hair tumbled over his face. She was running, running to him, over patches of thick clover, over autumn flowers vivid with color. A hare shot away in fright at her noisy passage, but her eyes were fixed only on that figure far out in the valley.
Breathless, sick with fear, she reached him, then gazed helplessly at the lieutenant’s insignia that decorated the blue cloth. Distraught, she turned away, but a hand clutched her skirt with such desperate urgency she was held there. Fighting to free herself, she heard a voice she knew.
“Stay for just a minute. It is so very lonely out here.” Young Harry Edmunds looked up at her with eyes that were fast closing, and something inside her broke. Sinking to the ground, she took his head in her lap, stroking his face with fingers that grew wet.
“It was a beautiful summer that year, Victoria,” he murmured.
She nodded. “Yes…it was…a beautiful summer.”
*
Letty came to her when it was dusk and no longer possible to see far into the valley. The few survivors had ceased coming in hours before, but Victoria had watched and waited even after they brought her back with Harry Edmunds. The young lieutenant had died soon after she reached him. The last small light of her youth had seemed to die with him.
Letty’s arm went around her shoulders and drew her away. They walked close together through the straggle of men who had nowhere to go because their regiments had vanished at twenty past eleven that day. The advancing night brought bitter chill, but fires were forbidden lest they betray their positions to the Russians, who had successfully carried away the captured guns and now had possession of the Woronzoff Road that led from Balaclava inland, giving them access to the siege town. No hot meals could be prepared, nor hot drinks to warm the stomachs of those who had fought to save the loss of Balaclava itself. Since the camps had been struck at dawn in case of a retreat, the survivors just rolled themselves in their cloaks and slept on the frost-hardened ground.
The ladies were lucky. Colonel Rayne had allowed the officers’ tents to be erected, and it was to the one shared by Jack and Hugo that Letty took her shivering friend, wrapping her in a blanket and fixing a cup containing brandy in the shaking hands.
“He did not return, Letty.”
“No,” said the girl gently, “but there is still hope. Mrs. Stokes is searching for her husband, who is missing.”
Victoria felt inordinately distressed. “Oh no! Stokes was such a good man.” Her eyes began to register again and saw the dim, shaded lamp on the table and the paleness of her friend’s face. “How selfish disaster makes us, Letty, for I have not even inquired about your beloved Jack.”
“He lives” was the simple reply. “By God’s mercy he was hit before reaching the big guns. They are at this moment digging out a ball from his thigh and another from his neck.” She tightened her hands into fists. “I am not as staunch as you, my dear friend. I could not bear to stay within the realm of his pain. You are my comfort. I only wish I could be yours.”
There was a rustle outside, and a voice said, “Mrs. Stanford, ma’am?”
“Yes. Who is there?” asked Letty.
“Trooper Connaught, ma’am.”
Victoria’s head shot up. “Come in, please.”
The flap was raised, and the soldier entered with a salute. She knew him as a cook in the regiment. He held some things in his hand.
“I was asked to give these to Colonel Stanford, but he’s got a bit of fever and don’t seem to know who I am. Would you take them, ma’am?”
“What are they?”
“Effects found on the body of his brother.” He put the items one by one on the table. “Watch, a miniature, some money, and two letters — one addressed to your husband, ma’am.” He straightened up.
She struggled to swallow the block in her throat. “I should like to see Captain Esterly’s body.”
The man winced. “Much better not, ma’am.”
Her throat was still thick as she stood up. “After all I have seen today I can face anything.”
“But, ma’am, he…some Frenchies brought him in not long ago and…well…” He turned to appeal to Letty. “It’s better to leave things as they are, ma’am…really.”
Letty took Victoria’s arm and held her tightly. “I think Connaught would not recommend staying away without good reason, Victoria.”
The man saluted and left, and Letty coaxed Victoria to sit once more. She sat like a marble statue, fixing her eyes on the watch and seeing only his face.
“He was my whole life, Letty.”
“I know.”
The watch ticked quite loudly, macabre in its continuing life in the face of death. “What shall I do now?” It burst from her like a moan.
Letty took her hand. “What he would want you to do.” She put her head back and closed her eyes against the tears. “He would want me to be strong, and I am not. He would want me to use life to the full, but how can I do it without him? He would want me not to grieve, but oh, Letty, I do… I do.”
Her body rocked back and forth in torment, until Letty took her rigid hands against her own breast and cried with her, tears shed for all those women whose world had been darkened that day.
PART THREE
Chapter Twelve
When they brought Charles to his tent at ten o’clock Victoria was sitting there alone, having left Letty when her husband was carried in, exhausted after his ordeal at the hands of the surgeons. The orderlies placed their second-in-command none too gently upon the makeshift bed and departed. He looked pale but composed; he smiled at her once the men had gone.
“I am luckier than most. I return whole and find a devoted wife awaiting me. I know there is no chance of anything hot to drink, but you should find a little brandy in the flask inside my valise.”
She remained where she was, looking at his blanched handsome features, knowing she would never hate anyone as she now hated this man.
“Victoria, are you all right?” It was said with surprising concern.
Painfully, wrenchingly, she brought it out. “Hugo is dead. You have not once inquired after him.”
His whole demeanor changed. She saw the upward tilt of his chin as the noble House of Stanford settled on his shoulders. “So that is the way of it!”
“You have not once inquired after him,” she repeated, “and yet he thought sufficiently of you to carry a letter to be delivered to you in the event of his death.” The
consuming anguish was making her voice shake. “I have read the letter and destroyed it. It did not belong to you. He owed you no words — he owed you nothing.”
Charles raised himself on his uninjured arm. “How dared you read a letter addressed to me!”
“How dared you speak to Hugo of honor, when you have none yourself!”
“You go too far, Victoria — even allowing for the trials of the day.”
So deep was her grief, so empty her future, so bitter her hatred, nothing would have stopped her saying what she must say.
“What kind of man could do what you have done? What manner of arrogance can make a man believe himself fitted to take responsibility for another man’s soul?” It came out of her with a passion she had never before displayed, that her upbringing condemned. “You allowed Hugo to believe he caused the death of our child and endangered my life that day. The doctor told us both, in each other’s presence, that a malformation brought about a premature birth and would preclude any further children. It would have happened if I had been sitting quietly before the fire with your mama. I heard the doctor tell you that Hugo’s brilliant descent from Mexford Heights saved valuable time and probably my life.” She fought against a tidal wave of tears. “How could you have put him through such torment of mind? How could you have questioned his honor, when everything he did was above reproach? How could you —” she caught her breath — “how could you have let him die still believing it? His letter asked for your forgiveness.” The memory of Hugo’s words, badly expressed but sincere, completed her breakdown and she put her face in her lap in a frenzy of sobbing. “Dear God, it is he who must try to forgive you. I never shall.”
*
Those wounded at the battle of Balaclava were being shipped to Scutari in transports that were not fit to answer their description of “hospital ships.” The same vessels that had conveyed men, horses and equipment from Varna were hastily transformed by the addition of a sprinkling of medical staff and a small chest of medicines to each. They were overcrowded. A ship fitted to accommodate two hundred would set sail with well over a thousand men suffering from cholera, recurrent diarrhea, fever, supporting wounds or amputated limbs.
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