For a moment Jack was tempted. To break orders and lead a successful attack that won the war. What a way to make his name! There would be inevitable promotion, honour, fame even. And then he thought of the alternative. If nobody followed and he and his small handful of the 113th charged alone, they would be massacred or worse, forced to turn tail. There would be failure, scandal and dishonour.
'Sorry, Thorpe, it would not work. We will have to follow orders.'
'Bugger orders,' somebody grunted until a shocked sergeant roared him into silence.
The Allies moved again, away from the sea and their supplies, marching around Sebastopol and with every hour allowing the Russians time to build up the defences and repair the broken morale of their men.
The terrain altered from a bald plain to dense brushwood where the leading regiments had to hack their way through scrub and the Rifles, out in front, had to feel for paths and hope the Russians had not prepared an ambush. Only the artillery was permitted to use the road, so the infantry sweated in the heat, held their muskets above their head to escape the tangled undergrowth and swore as thorns snarled in their clothes and impeded their progress. Jack grunted as the supple bough of a branch, released by the man in front, swung back and knocked his shako off, he heard Coleman release a whole volley of curses as thorns ripped into his uniform and they struggled on, angry, hot and frustrated.
'We're lucky it's only the Russians and not the Burmese,' Coleman gave his opinion, 'they would have a hundred ambushes to stop us.'
Panting and sweating in the rear of the army, Jack could only agree. If the Allies had missed a trick by not attacking at once, the Russian command was proving equally inept by not trying to stem the Allies advance. A few successful ambushes could cause considerable casualties among the Allies and raise Russian morale.
As if to prove his point, there was a sudden burst of musketry from ahead, followed by some sporadic cheering. Cannon boomed, deep and menacing, and then silence.
'What was that?' Somebody asked.
'How the devil should I know?' Jack said irritably. About to say that if he was in a decent regiment and not the blasted 113th he might find out, he bit off the words before he spoke them. There was no sense in saying what everybody already knew to be the truth.
'The Russians made a stand,' the words came down the line, 'and we shoved them aside.'
Not surprisingly it was Elliot who found out that the advance guard of the British had come across a lone Russian regiment backed by some artillery. The Russian infantry had fired a single volley and then run, leaving a great deal of booty behind.
The 113th kept moving, slightly more warily. The undergrowth closed in on them, claustrophobic, containing the struggling men within a close green horizon, vicious with thorns. Without warning, the brushwood ended at a clearing of around five acres, with two pot-holed roads intersecting at a smouldering building that looked more like a barracks than a farm. Smoke rose from the interior.
'That's McKenzie's farm,' Elliot seemed to know everything. 'This is where the Russians tried to fight.'
'That'll be wee Willie McKenzie,' Logan muttered. 'He was ayeways moving house.'
Thorpe looked at him, evidently unsure if he was telling the truth or not. Jack checked his men; they were all still there, staggering, sweating, suffering and complaining but still marching, still carrying their muskets, still soldiering on. For a regiment rumoured to be the worst in the army, the 113th was holding out remarkably well.
'We've lost twelve men to heat and disease so far,' Major Snodgrass said, 'and without hearing a shot fired.'
'At this rate,' Fleming said, 'all the Russians have to do is allow Lord Raglan to march the men around the walls of Sebastopol and they will have won. We won't have any army left to fight with.'
They halted on the Mackenzie Heights, with the men throwing themselves on the ground in heat-induced exhaustion until the officers and NCOs forced them to eat and prepare the camp. Some slept where they lay. When three more men of the 113th died during the night only their close colleagues grieved; the army was growing accustomed to death. The march resumed next day with the men toiling on their circuitous route around the city they had come so far to attack. They left the ridge, forded the Tchernaya River or crossed by the Traktir Bridge and marched on, seemingly forever, bleeding men as heat or disease thinned the ranks. Eventually, and to Jack's surprise, they came in sight of the sea again, and halted for a rest above a small port whose very name seemed to chill him with a portent of disaster.
'Balaklava,' Elliot said. 'And there it is; our first major conquest since we arrived in Russia.'
The conquest was not entirely without powder as the Russians occupied an ancient Genoese fort that sat on a mound outside the town and contested the British advance with artillery. HMS Agamemnon responded with broadsides while the Rifles attacked from the landward side. The fort surrendered within the hour, and Balaklava fell.
'The war progresses satisfactorily,' Snodgrass said.
'Yes, sir,' Jack agreed. 'If only our regiment could take part.'
'Perhaps it is for the best that we do not,' Haverdale said.
Jack looked down on Balaklava. Set beside a small oval inlet about half a mile long and quarter of a mile wide, the village would not have been out of place in Cornwall with its white-walled, green-tiled villas and carefully tended gardens all sparkling and serene under the Crimean sun. There were clematis and roses, honeysuckle and vines decorating the garden walls, while the glittering waters of the pool-like harbour held reflections of the heights and slopes all around. All around the village and stretching upward on the heights were carefully regulated vegetable patches, not unlike the cottage gardens of the labourers in Herefordshire.
'I had no idea that Russia could be so beautiful,' Jack said. 'It's a lovely harbour. Raglan was right all along. It will be far better bringing in stores here than landing on the open beach.'
'Your faith in our august commander is touching my young friend,' Haverdale said. 'This is only your second campaign I think. Now listen, all the supplies for our army, food, water, clothing, boots, tents, fodder for the horses, ammunition, cannon, wagons, and replacements have to come in here, and the sick, wounded and prisoners have to be taken out.' He nodded down to the port. 'Suddenly it has got a lot smaller, don't you think?'
Jack nodded. He could not dispute the facts, but at that moment he was much more concerned with the two figures who were riding into the village. He took a deep breath as he watched Helen and her older companion walk their horses as casually as if they were entering a settlement in peaceful England.
Haverdale caught the direction of his glance. 'Oh don't you worry about these two,' he said. 'Mrs Colonel Maxwell is an old hand at campaigning. She goes everywhere her husband goes and often places he is feared to tread.'
'Is that Colonel Maxwell's wife?' Jack asked.
'Wife and daughter,' Haverdale dismissed them casually. 'Now there's something worth looking at!' He pointed as a large ship slowly steamed to the harbour entrance. 'There is HMS Agamemnon; the largest ship in the fleet!'
As the ship slid into harbour with her bulk dwarfing the pretty little houses, Jack saw Helen and Mrs Maxwell standing to watch, and then the ship moved on, and his view of Helen and Balaklava vanished. 'Beauty and the Beast,' he said softly.
'Quite,' Haverdale said, although Jack doubted that he had any idea of the images that were running through his mind.
'Of course, the 113th will not be in Balaklava,' Haverdale said. 'Campbell and the 93rd Highlanders are to be its defence and garrison.'
'Where are we going, sir?' Jack stared down at Balaklava but Helen had vanished and the magic moment had passed. His gaze lingered for a moment.
'Up there,' Haverdale pointed to the heights that overlooked the village.
Then I can look down on Balaklava; I may see her from time to time.
Colonel Murphy looked very old as he addressed the officers. 'The British Army is los
ing around a hundred men a day to cholera and general sickness. Because of these high losses, General Raglan has at last decided to put the 113th in with the fighting regiments. Apart from a handful of men who saw action in Burma, this is our first chance since the disaster in the Punjab to claim our place as a fighting regiment. Make me proud of the 113th.'
'We will, sir,' Snodgrass said.
'I want the 113th to be known as a regiment of fighting gentlemen,' Murphy said. 'We want nothing underhand, nothing that will be in any way detrimental to the good name of the 113th. Remember that my lads, we are a regiment of fighting gentlemen.'
'Quite right, sir!' Snodgrass shouted. Only Jack heard his sotto-voice mutter, 'or filthy scoundrels.'
At last, I have my chance! We are to be a fighting regiment!
'They're still arguing about it,' Elliot reported. 'Our general, Sir George Cathcart, is all hot for an immediate assault on Sebastopol but the Frenchies are for holding back and having a formal siege. 'Our Sir George said that we could walk into Sebastopol without losing a man, but the Frenchies don't agree. They say that their morale is low and if the first attack fails they may not have the heart to make another.'
'How do you know these things, Elliot?' Jack asked. 'Do you have a personal carrier pigeon inside the general's tent or something?'
He was surprised that Elliot did not immediately come back with some quip. Instead, he was quiet for a few moments.
'Come now Elliot; I was merely complimenting you on your knowledge. I don't honestly believe that you have a personal carrier pigeon.'
The 113th spent that night digging trenches along the ridge that overlooked Sebastopol. Much to Jack's disappointment, even if he stretched his neck to the utmost, he could not see anything of Balaklava, some eight or nine miles along a steep track.
'The Russians could send out patrols,' Jack said, 'so make sure the trenches are deep enough to grant us protection.' Although he was there to supervise operations, Jack quickly realised that Private Ogden knew much more about digging than he ever would.
'You were a navigator weren't you, Ogden?'
'Yes, sir,' Ogden backed away a pace as if it had been a crime to work as a railway labourer.
'All right then: you spent half your life working with a spade; you show the lads what to do.'
'Yes, sir.' Ogden's ordinarily surly face lightened a fraction. He straightened his shoulders with this new responsibility.
From their position on the ridge overlooking Sebastopol, the 113th could see the Russians steadily improving the defences, while the Allies prepared for a bombardment and a siege.
'General Cathcart was convinced that Sebastopol would have fallen to a determined assault as soon as the Allies arrived.' Elliot said.
'Even I heard that one,' Jack said. 'Without the benefit of your carrier pigeon.'
'I don't have such a pigeon,' Elliot insisted.
Colonel Murphy called the officers together. 'Every regiment has to provide working parties to build defences and bring artillery from the ships. The 113th, as the regiment least affected by disease, will provide twice as many. Elliot: you and Windrush help bring up the guns. Fleming, you, Haverdale and Preston dig up here. Major Snodgrass, I need you to liaise with the other regiments.'
Jack had no objections to taking a working party to Balaklava to help unload artillery. He hoped that he might chance upon Helen somewhere near the harbour, so was quite light-hearted when he led his men down from the ridge.
'Dear God what's happened?' He stopped dead as he saw Balaklava. Where only a few days back this had been a neat, pretty little village of pristine villas and colourful gardens, now there was a wrecked shambles with walls pulled down, gardens dug up, and flowers trampled.
'We happened,' Elliot said. 'The British Army happened.' He looked around. 'About thirty thousand men with dysentery or cholera, lacking firewood or shelter marching through an enemy village; what do you expect?'
Jack nodded. Of all the houses that fronted the sea by the harbour, only one had retained its original character. Two stories high, the green tiled roof reflected the sunlight, while colourful flowers still decorated the outside wall. He knew instinctively that Mrs Colonel Maxwell had commandeered that house. No Russian would stand against her and not even the most desperate of British private soldiers would wish to cross that formidable woman.
'You there: Lieutenant!' the voice was lofty, imperious even, and Jack halted. Mrs Colonel Maxwell stared at him from the gate of the house. 'Come here.'
Jack obeyed, giving a small bow.
'Who are you, sir?' Mrs Maxwell frowned. 'I seem to recognise you.'
'Lieutenant Jack Windrush of the 113th, Ma'am, at your service.' Jack noticed a movement at the small window immediately beside the door.
Mrs Maxwell gave the tiniest incline of her head. 'No, I don't know the name, unless you are related to the late General Windrush. No,' she said again, dismissing the idea. 'General Windrush's boy is in the Royal Malverns. Well Lieutenant Windrush, I want you to take a message to my husband. He is Colonel Maxwell of the 118th.'
Jack nodded. 'Yes, of course, Ma'am.'
'Wait here,' Mrs Maxwell ordered. As soon as she disappeared, the small window opened, and Helen thrust her head outside. 'We've undoubtedly met before, Jack Windrush,' she said at once.
Jack felt the colour flush to his cheeks. 'Yes, we have,' he said.
Helen's smile was pure mischief. She scanned him, up and down and back up again. 'You look quite dashing in your uniform,' she said and vanished as her mother returned to the door.
'Take this, Lieutenant,' Mrs Maxwell said sharply, 'and tell Colonel Maxwell I send my compliments.'
'Yes, Ma'am,' Jack said. 'I do have my duty to complete first…'
'I realise that, Lieutenant! Of course, you must do your duty first. Now be off with you: you have cannon to unload.'
Immediately Mrs Maxwell shut the door, the small window opened, and Helen appeared again and continued as if she had not been interrupted. 'You look quite dashing in uniform, but I preferred you without.'
Jack opened his mouth, but no words came.
'But you don't look the slightest bit dashing when you stand there catching flies,' Helen said. 'Can you speak, Lieutenant Jack Windrush?'
'Of course, I can speak, Miss Helen,' Jack said.
'Oh now?' Her eyes widened. 'I see you know my name! For shame sir, sneaking around learning about a lady behind her back.'
'There was no need to sneak, Miss Helen,' Jack decided that the best way to deal with this lady was to treat her as he used to treat the village girls in Malvern. 'Your name and reputation go before you. You, after all, are the young woman who spies on men when they are bathing.'
Her face coloured, but with delight and not embarrassment. 'And you, sir, are the man who parades himself unclad in front of two most respectable ladies!' She closed the shutters before he could find the words to retaliate. Only as he turned to stalk away in dignified silence did she open them again. 'And a most delicious sight it was too, if I may make so bold.'
'Oh you are the bold one, without mistake,' Jack said, realised that Mrs Maxwell was opening an upstairs window and marched away quickly. Helen's smile remained with him even after the burning flush on his face died away.
Chapter Ten
Siege of Sebastopol
October 1854
'Well Jack, I fear we have missed the boat.' Elliot raised the flask. Alcohol had flushed his face and slurred his voice. 'The Russians have strengthened all their bastions, they have over three hundred heavy guns to defend Sebastopol, they've built a pontoon bridge across the south bay of the harbour, and they've brought in thousands of veterans.'
Jack nodded. 'I knew all that,' he said. Rumours and stories spread around the trenches nearly as quickly as cholera. 'Your pigeon was late with that news.'
'Ah,' Elliot said, 'but did you hear the latest? The Russians have been sending out raiding parties to capture prisoners.'
'I did hear that, too,' Jack said. He stood up to survey his men. Wagons sprinkled the road to Balaklava; most were empty as they returned to the ships in the harbour. There were some Crimean bullock wagons; a few camel-powered carts carried from Varna, a dozen Maltese mule-carts that had carried vegetables or what fruit or bread they could get. Beside them, threading to the tented camp in a steady stream were the heavier artillery wagons, laden with fascines to protect the batteries his men had helped to dig, or shot and shell and powder for the guns themselves.
Jack ducked as a cannon from Sebastopol opened fire. He saw the jet of smoke an instant before he heard the flat report of the gun. The smoke lingered around the bastion for a second and then there was a whizz and a loud bang away to his left. He straightened up. Elliot had lowered his flask.
'Blasted Russians: when are we going to fire back? We've plenty guns, damn them.'
Jack nodded. 'I don't know; we've been here for days, digging for the guns as the Russians watch us and shoot whenever they have a fancy for it.'
Elliot stood up and waved a small fist. 'Your time is coming, Russians. We'll get you!'
At first sight, the Allied trench system looked impressive with its lines of parallels - trenches that lay parallel to the walls of Sebastopol, connected by saps or communication trenches. Each successive parallel was closer to the city, so lessening the distance any attacking force had to cover, yet even the closest was hundreds of yards away. Advancing that distance under fire from Russian cannon and musketry would be suicidal unless the Allied artillery succeeded in blowing a breach in the defences.
Each sap was dug in a zig-zag to ensure the Russians could not fire a charge of grapeshot down the length, killing or maiming a large number of men. It was a procedure that besieging armies had employed for centuries: tried, tested and slow. Too slow in Jack's opinion, for the British Army had to end this siege quick and withdraw, or the cruel Russian winter would claim hundreds of lives. He remembered what had happened to Bonaparte's troops in their invasion and shivered. God help us if we have to endure a winter here.
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