The Valley of Death

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  GARRY DOUGLAS KILWORTH was raised in South Yemen, the son of an RAF sergeant and has a BA (Hons) in English from King’s College London in which his special subject was American Literature. Later he served 15 years in the RAF himself. More recently he was with the British Army in Hong Kong (1988–91), where he wrote for The South China Morning Post. He now divides his time between Suffolk and Spain, writing full time. He has won many awards for both his children’s and adult’s novels.

  Other novels by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Fancy Jack Crossman Novels:

  The Winter Soldiers

  The Devil’s Own

  Soldiers in the Mist

  Other fiction:

  Highlander

  Witchwater Country

  In The Hollow of The Deep-Sea Wave

  Spiral Winds

  House of Tribes

  A Midsummer’s Nightmare

  The Navigator Kings trilogy

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55-56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published by HarperCollins 1998

  This paperback edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2011

  Copyright © Gary Douglas Kilworth, 2011

  The right of Gary Douglas Kilworth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-8033-256-7

  eISBN 978-1-7803-3507-0

  Printed and bound in the EU

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This second Crossman novel

  is for my friend John Brosnan,

  who said he enjoyed

  the first one.

  Author’s Note

  Although many prime sources have been used for the research behind this novel, secondary sources have also been invaluable. I wish to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the following works, authors and publishers:

  The Russian Army of the Crimean War 1854–56, Robert H. G. Thomas and Richard Scollins, Osprey Military.

  The British Army on Campaign 2 The Crimea 1854–56, Michael Barthorp and Pierre Turner, Osprey Military.

  Uniforms and Weapons of the Crimean War, Robert Wilkinson-Latham, B. T. Batsford Ltd.

  Battles of the Crimean War, W. Baring Pemberton, B. T. Batsford Ltd. (A wonderful volume!)

  The Crimean Campaign with the Connaught Rangers 1854–56, Lieutenant-Colonel N. Steevens, Griffth and Farren.

  Rifle Green in the Crimea, George Caldwell and Robert Cooper, Bugle Home Publications.

  The Crimean War, Denis Judd, Granada Publishing Ltd.

  1854–1856 Crimea (The War with Russia from Contemporary Photographs), Lawrence James, Hayes Kennedy Ltd.

  Heroes of the Crimea, Michael Barthorp, Blandford.

  The Thin Red Line, John Selby, Hamish Hamilton.

  George Lawson – Surgeon in the Crimea, edited letters explained by Victor Bonham-Carter, Constable and Co. Ltd.

  Once again I should also like to thank David Cliff and the Crimean War Research Society, Major John Spiers (Retired) and David Greenwood, all of whom have aided and abetted me in some way or another in the writing of this novel.

  The following are the names of real people who appear in this series:

  Brigadier-General Buller

  Marshal St Arnaud

  Brigadier-General Pennefather

  General Lord Raglan

  Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown

  Captain Nolan

  Lieutenant-Colonel Shirley

  Lord Clanrickarde

  Prince Menshikoff

  John Gorrie, inventor

  William Cullen, inventor

  Brigadier-General Lord Cardigan

  William Howard Russell, The Times correspondent

  Samuel Morse, inventor

  Major-General Lord Lucan

  Lieutenant-General Sir George De Lacy Evans

  Major-General Sir Richard England

  Lieutenant-General Sir George Cathcart

  Lieutenant-General HRH The Duke of Cambridge

  General Canrobert (Bob-Can’t)

  Dr James (Miranda) Barry

  Mary Seacole, West Indian nurse

  Prince Napoleon Joseph Bonaparte (Plon-Plon)

  Carol Szathmari, photographer

  G.S. MacLennan, bagpipe music composer

  Brigadier-General Sir Colin Campbell

  Brigadier-General Codrington

  Colonel Troche

  General Kvetzenski

  General Gorchakov

  General Kiriakov

  General Bosquet

  General Bouat

  Captain Enisherloff

  Colonel Lacy Yea

  Lieutenant-Colonel Egerton

  (Ensign?) Coney

  General Airey

  Brigadier-General Bentinck

  Colonel Hood

  Colonel Upton

  Dasha Alexandrovna, Russian heroine

  Henri Giffard, inventor

  Lieutenant-Colonel Franz Edward Ivanovitch Todleben

  Sir John Burgoyne, Raglan’s Chief Engineer

  Staff Assistant-Surgeon George Lawson

  Captain Patrick Ferguson

  Mrs Rogers

  Florence Nightingale

  Admiral Korniloff

  Admiral Lyons

  Admiral Dundas

  Colonel Ainslie

  Lord George Paget

  Captain Maude

  Captain Brandling

  Brigadier-General Sir James Scarlett

  Lieutenant Elliot

  Colonel Dalrymple White

  Colonel Griffith

  Captain Ewart

  Lieutenant Calthorpe

  Captain Morris

  Mr Upton

  Captain Goodlake and his sharpshooters

  Major Champion

  Midshipman Hewett

  Lieutenant Conolly

  Sergeant Owens

  John Broughton, boxing champion

  Contents

  Map

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  29

  1

  Sergeant Jack Crossman lay asleep on the bare boards of an upper-storey room in a hovel north of Balaclava. Normally he shared the room with Major Lovelace, his superior in matters of espionage and sabotage. Tonight Lovelace was out in the field, doing some dirty business alone. Crossman had just returned from a mission, or ‘fox hunt’ as it was known to insiders, and was resting before the next one.

  A deep blue shadow slid on to the sill of the small, glassless window. The shape was almost invisible against the dark moonless sky behind him, though the stars were obliterated by his form as he crouched in the cavity, getting his eyes used to the dark
ness in the room. Once he could see, the figure dropped silently to the floor. Slowly he lifted his carbine, aiming at the sergeant.

  As the man was squeezing the trigger a breeze from the window rustled the loose fabric of his tchekman tunic.

  Crossman woke with a start to the smell of horse sweat and red cabbage. Seeing the dark figure, perhaps some phantom manifested from his dream, he cried out in supernatural fear. Luckily a soldier’s rough instinct also made him roll quickly sideways.

  The musket exploded, sounding like a cannon in the confines of the room. A ball ripped into the floorboards where Crossman had lain and acrid blue smoke filled the air. The intruder dropped his smoking carbine and drew a sword. Crossman’s personal revolver was wrapped in his greatcoat, which was being used as a pillow, but he found the handle of his German hunting knife on his belt. He whipped the knife from its sheath and plunged the blade into the man’s boot, through his foot, pinning it to the floorboards.

  No scream came from the wounded man’s lips. Instead he snarled and slashed with his sabre at the sergeant on the floor, taking a piece of dark hair from the Ranger’s head. The starlight glittered on the curved blade as the intruder took a second slash at Crossman, who rolled towards the window out of reach. His assailant was still nailed to the floor by the sturdy blade of the German hunting knife.

  ‘Wynter, Peterson, Devlin!’ yelled Crossman, calling for the men sleeping on the ground floor. ‘’Ware intruders!’

  The soldiers below would have already been wakened by the shot a few seconds earlier and he did not want one of them running up the stone staircase to be stabbed at the top by this night assassin.

  Having warned his men, the tall, lean sergeant leaped from the window, landing in the thick mud below. It was his intention to rush round the front, arm himself, and then go upstairs for the intruder. However, when he rolled on the ground a shot whined by his head and buried itself in the mud with a plut. A second figure came out of the darkness, rushing towards him, a drawn sabre in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  Out here in the starlight, Crossman could see a little better. The intruders were wearing blue uniforms.

  ‘Bloody Cossacks,’ he said, aggrieved.

  As the man dashed towards him, Crossman kicked out with both feet at the attacker’s legs. The Cossack fell in the mud but tenaciously retained his grip on his weapons. Crossman got to his feet and despite the sucking mud managed to run round the corner. He hit something soft, which turned out to be the flank of a horse. There were two mounts being held by a third Cossack, ready for a quick retreat.

  The Cossack holding the horses had been startled. His left hand was full of reins and his right held his own horse in check. He could not reach for his weapons without letting go of the jostling horses, which he was not inclined to do.

  The struck mount whinnied and kicked, objecting to being butted in the stomach by a fleeing man. Crossman reached up and felt around the saddle, hoping to find a carbine. He found something, but it was not a weapon as such. It was thin and pliable. A whip, such as Don Cossacks carried.

  There came a series of explosions from the house and something fell out of the window, landing in the mud below as a dead weight. This was the first Cossack, Crossman guessed, discovered by his men. The second came round the corner, shouting something to the man holding the horses. He whirled his sabre about his head, ready to strike at Crossman.

  Crossman licked out with the whip, lashing the man across the face, keeping him at a distance. Red weals appeared on the Cossack’s cheeks and brow. They began to bleed into his eyes, so that he had difficulty in seeing. Giving up on killing the sergeant, the Cossack sheathed his sword and tried to mount his horse, yelling something at his compatriot.

  Out of the night came three rapid shots. The Cossack holding the horses immediately fell between the mounts. The horses now bolted, dragging the half-mounted second Cossack along the ground and slamming him into the side of a building. He climbed to his feet, staggered a few yards, and was then shot through the head by Peterson, who had come running out of the hovel into the muddy street.

  Silence followed, the air smelling of gunpowder.

  ‘Lord Almighty,’ said Crossman, aware that only a very few minutes ago he had been fast asleep. ‘I feel sick . . .’

  ‘Did he get you at all, Sergeant?’ cried Corporal Devlin. ‘Are you hit?’

  ‘No, no. I think I lost one of the curls my mother loved so much, but not my head, thank God. Thank you, Peterson, for getting the last one. Who shot the man in the saddle? Sounded like a revolver.’

  ‘I did,’ said a voice behind them, and Major Lovelace stepped out of the shadows, looking like a Mongolian horse breeder in a ragged fur cap, a civilian sheepskin coat, and baggy Turkish trousers. It’s a good job I came back when I did.’

  The horses, having plunged off into the night, were to be seen no more. From their tents and bivouacs, soldiers were calling, asking what was the matter. Devlin yelled out that all was now well. The incident had passed. There was no longer any cause for alarm.

  Lovelace said, ‘You sure you’re all right, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. I was fast asleep when the first one came into my room. I thought it was the devil, come for me.’

  Peterson, at his elbow, murmured, ‘Thought it was Skuggs, more like, come to take his revenge.’

  Crossman glared. The slight but grim-looking Lance Corporal Peterson was a woman in disguise. This fact was unknown to everyone but Sergeant Crossman, who had caught her washing at a rain barrel one morning. There were more than a few such women on campaign in the Crimea. Some had cut their hair short and joined to be with their husbands, some were camp-followers who had taken to wearing the uniforms of dead soldiers and some, like Peterson, wanted simply to take part in the excitement of a war. She wanted to do the things men did, at the same time receiving pay for it. Back in England Peterson might have been a destitute female. Out here she was Lance Corporal Peterson, crackshot with a rifle. It was mainly because of her prowess with a weapon that Crossman kept her gender a secret and retained her in his peloton.

  Now she waited behind for an answer once the others had gone inside the hovel. Crossman did not like the fact that she was so close to being right. It was true the sergeant had engineered the death of Skuggs, a soldier who had murdered one of his comrades during the Battle of the Alma in order to protect himself. Crossman had all but witnessed the murder carried out by Skuggs but had no proof. Skuggs knew that and had attempted to kill the sergeant on more than one occasion.

  Peterson had been present at Skuggs’ ‘execution’.

  ‘Skuggs is dead,’ said Crossman. ‘You know that, Peterson.’

  ‘I believe in ghosts, Sergeant. Don’t you? Murdered men – why they never rest after death until they’ve got their revenge.’

  Her eyes did not leave his face. She knew nothing of Skuggs’ crimes. Crossman had not enlightened her.

  Crossman said, ‘Skuggs was shot down by a company of Russian riflemen.’

  ‘And we know who sent him to them, don’t we, Sergeant?’

  ‘You know nothing, Peterson – nothing at all – and you’re not going to know. It’s for your own protection. If I have nightmares, it’s not because I’m feeling guilty about anything to do with Skuggs’ death.’

  She shook her head in disbelief, but let the matter drop, following the others inside the hovel.

  One of the men now lit a lamp. Wynter and Devlin were ordered to put the three bodies in the woodshed, ready for collection in the morning. They found the first one under the first-floor window, crumpled in the mud where he had taken three Minié rounds in the chest. Wynter and Devlin both claimed to have hit him first as he was climbing back out of the window, a perfect target.

  ‘I don’t doubt you’ll be getting a few more of these visits,’ said Lovelace, untying his boots. ‘Those Cossacks are from the company you and your men ambushed on the Fedioukine Hills two days ago. It’s my guess th
ey know who you are – the fact that you’re a special group detached from the 88th Connaught Rangers. You’ll have to watch your back more closely.’

  ‘You think they know me personally?’ asked Crossman, raising his eyebrows. ‘How could that be?’

  Major Lovelace shrugged. ‘A spy in our camp? One of the Greeks or Tartars. They can do it too, you know. You killed quite a few of those Cossacks. They’re not a forgiving bunch. They’ll want your hide very badly after such a humiliation.’

  Peterson was watching Major Lovelace in frustration as he struggled with his second boot, trying unsuccessfully to remove it from a fatigue-swollen, sweaty foot.

  ‘Shall I send for your batman, sir?’ she suggested.

  ‘No, damn it, I can take off my own boots, sir. I’ve just been into Sebastopol and back, through the Russian sentries and sailors working on the defences. I can certainly undress myself.’

  But despite his protestations, it did not look like it. Finally Peterson could stand it no longer and though she detested the upper class and their frail efforts to care for themselves, she straddled his leg and tugged off the muddy, stubborn boot.

  ‘Thank you, Peterson.’

  Major Lovelace then proceeded to remove the sheepskins, until he stood in only his shirt.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘Those damn sheepskins are full of lice. I couldn’t bear them a moment longer. Hand me those trousers lying on the back of that chair over there, will you, Peterson, there’s a good chap.’

  Peterson, flaming red, did as she was asked, much to the amusement of Crossman.

  Once Lovelace was dressed, Crossman proceeded to question him further on his earlier work.

  ‘Now, sir, these Cossacks. You say they’re out looking for me?’

  ‘Those were Cossack assassins. They usually work in threes. Didn’t you know they’re sending out these troikas after you? They know what you did at the farmhouse in the north, where you ambushed them before, and on your other fox hunts. They seem to think you’ve got it in for them.’