The Brave Captains

by V. A. Stuart

  “Aye, sir, there is.”

  “Then what is it? Well”—when the Highlander remained obstinately silent—”if you are afraid that I might betray her, why are you taking me to her now?”

  “I have no fear that you will betray her, sir. Certainly not when you have heard how she comes to be here.”

  Phillip lost patience with him. He reined in. “I shall accompany you no further unless you tell me for what reason she has sought refuge in your camp, Sergeant. I am entitled to know that, at least.”

  “It would be coming better from Mistress Catriona herself,” Sergeant MacCorkill demurred. “I have not the words and am not knowing the whole story. But if you insist, sir—”

  “I must insist, Sergeant,” Phillip said firmly. “I respect your loyalty and I am, as you know, indebted to both Mistress Catriona and your wife for the timely assistance they rendered me after my fall. However if I am to be asked a favour—which, because of my indebtedness, I should find it difficult to refuse—then I must know by whom and why this favour is required, before committing myself. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No, sir, it is not,” the Highlander conceded. He had halted, relinquishing his grasp of the bay’s rein so that he might turn to face its rider. “I will tell you what I can, sir. But you will please to respect my confidence. You understand, I—”

  “Of course,” Phillip assured him. “You have my word that I shall repeat nothing you tell me, Sergeant MacCorkill.”

  “Thank you, Mr Hazard.” The Sergeant resumed his slow, long-striding walk, his hand once more on the rein, urging Phillip’s tired horse to follow him. “You were asking why Mistress Catriona sought refuge in our camp well, the answer is simple enough. We are all Sutherland men in the 93rd, sir, known to each other by clan and name all our lives, and our women too. Our ties are family ties and very close. Before I was taking the Queen’s shilling, sir, I was employed as a ghillie in the service of Mistress Catriona’s grandfather—old Sir Alastair Moray of Guise—and my wife, Morag, was nursemaid to the family. So from whom else would Mistress Catriona seek help, when she was in need of it? ’Twas Morag who was caring for her—and her twin brother also, sir—after their mother died in giving them birth. They were like her own bairns to Morag, the two of them, for all she was herself just a young lassie when they were first given into her charge, and she was loving them as if they had been her own. And small wonder—they were a bonnie pair, as I can well remember.” The gruff voice softened momentarily. “Their father was going abroad, you see, after he was losing his wife. The family is old but few Highland families are wealthy, so that the Morays of Guise are usually needing to seek their fortunes overseas, if they are not serving in the army—or in the navy, sir, like yourself. Captain Ninian Moray—Mistress Catriona’s father—was a military engineer.”

  “In the British Army?” Phillip questioned. He was faintly puzzled, for the name Moray was one to which he could attach no particular significance and he wondered why Catriona had been at such pains to conceal it.

  “No, sir.” The Sergeant shook his head. “As a young man, the Captain was serving in India with the Company’s Army of Bengal, but his health broke down due to the climate, and he could not return there. After his wife’s death, he came out to Russia, to take service under the Tsar and …” He hesitated. “He was associated with a Colonel Upton and his son, sir, in the building of the naval dockyard here in Sebastopol, Mistress Catriona was telling me. You will be knowing about Mr Upton, I don’t doubt, sir?”

  Phillip was about to deny it when he recalled having heard that the cavalry had captured Mr Upton with his wife and four small daughters, in a farmhouse outside Balaclava, at the end of the flank march … he frowned. Upton had claimed to be a British civilian but his wife had been Russian and, on General Airey’s orders, he had been placed under arrest on suspicion of being, in fact, an enemy spy. His wife, at her own request, had been sent back to Sebastopol with the children, as far as he could remember—or else to Constantinople—and, again on Airey’s orders, the farmhouse had been searched for evidence of Upton’s duplicity, and a plan of Sebastopol found hidden there. If Catriona’s father had been associated with him, then that suggested … Phillip drew in his breath sharply.

  “Yes,” he said, “I have heard of Mr Upton, Sergeant. He is being held under house arrest in Balaclava, is he not, in the belief that he came here to spy on us?”

  “That is so, sir,” Sergeant MacCorkill agreed and lapsed into a moody silence. Phillip waited for him to continue his narrative, his interest in Catriona’s story now thoroughly aroused but, when the Highlander failed to do so, he asked curiously, “How did Mistress Catriona make her way here in the first place, Sergeant? I presume she came in search of her father but—did your wife and the other women smuggle her aboard one of the troop transports? Is that why they are hiding her in your camp?”

  “No, sir.” The Sergeant roused himself. “Mistress Catriona was reaching Balaclava a day or so after we took it. As to how she made her way here, why”—there was a note of pride in the deep, lilting Highland voice—“she came on foot, sir, dressed in peasant clothing to enable her to pass unmolested through the Russian lines. She is a very courageous and spirited young lady, and she was not wishing to remain in Sebastopol, when her own kith and kin were laying siege to the place. She was waiting her opportunity and then she was making her escape—alone, sir. She was not travelling with Mr Upton and his family but, hearing of his fate and fearing that she might share it, she sought refuge with us. ’Twas quite by chance that she found Morag—my wife, sir—for she had no idea that either of us would be here, but she knew, of course, that the women of the regiment would help her. We deemed it prudent to conceal her presence in our camp lest, by some misunderstanding, she were to be sent back to Sebastopol, as they were sending Mistress Upton.”

  “You mean,” Phillip said, astonished, “that she was in Sebastopol when our troops landed? But for how long had she been there, MacCorkill?”

  “Well, sir …” Sergeant MacCorkill gave vent to a sigh.

  “She had been there for close on two years, I am thinking—aye, it would be that, at least. As a child, Mistress Catriona formed a strong attachment to her father and he was promising that, as soon as she should be old enough, he would send for her to keep house for him. The Captain was a man of his word and, when she was seventeen, he was sending for her. I was from home by then, sir, but I mind Morag telling me of it. ’Twas as if the lass had been granted her heart’s desire when she was receiving her father’s letter …” He shrugged resignedly. “One cannot see into the future, of course and, although no one was wanting her to go, least of all old Sir Alastair, there was no stopping Mistress Catriona! She was travelling out to Constantinople, in the care of friends of the family, and her father was meeting her there and taking her back with him to Sebastopol. ’Twas the last we saw of her, until now.”

  “And what of her father?” Phillip pursued. “Is he still in Sebastopol, do you know?”

  “Captain Moray is dead, sir,” the Sergeant answered flatly. “He was taken ill within a few months of Mistress Catriona’s arrival, it seems, and he died soon after war was declared, leaving her alone and without the means of returning home. There was not much money and so she was having to take employment as governess, with the family of a Russian nobleman. She was with them until she made her escape, sir, and she was telling us—my wife and me, sir—that they were very good to her. All the same, in the circumstances, Mistress Catriona was feeling that she could not stay in Sebastopol, Mr Hazard. In her place, I’d have felt the same, sir.”

  As indeed, he would himself, Phillip thought. His interest now keenly aroused, he asked a number of other questions, but Sergeant MacCorkill was unable to tell him any more.

  “You will need to ask Mistress Catriona herself, sir,” he declared woodenly. “I have told you all that I am knowing, Mr Hazard. More, perhaps, than she would have wished.”

  “But the
favour she intends to ask of me?” Phillip insisted. “Don’t you know what that is, Sergeant?”

  “You’ll be knowing yourself, sir, very soon,” the tall Sergeant assured him. He gestured ahead of them to where the flickering glow of bivouac fires lit the darkness—the first that Sir Colin Campbell had permitted. “Our camp is here.” Still with a guiding hand on the bay’s bridle, he led the way to his wife’s tent. There was another horse tethered outside it and, even in the dim light, Phillip recognized it as the splendid Arab charger Alex Sheridan rode and which, he had confided, came from the stable of Omar Pasha, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief. Sheridan had ridden the beautiful animal at the heels of General Scarlett, he recalled, when the Heavy Brigade had made their brilliant charge earlier in the day but, when he attempted to question Sergeant MacCorkill as to the whereabouts of the Arab’s owner, he could only shake his bead.

  “I cannot say, sir. The horse was one of those in the Light cavalry charge and, by a miracle, is unhurt. But I know of no Captain Sheridan. As you will be aware, the Light Cavalry Brigade were almost wiped out.”

  He was painfully aware of this, Phillip thought, recalling the wounded and dying men he and his party of bluejackets had carried from the battlefield but he said no more, and the Sergeant assisted him to dismount.

  “If you will be going in, sir,” the man invited, holding back the tent-flap. “I will see that both of the horses are fed and watered. Yours, I am thinking, would be the better for a rubdown.”

  Phillip thanked him and entered the tent. It was lit by a single oil lantern and, at first, after the darkness outside, he could see little save the shadowy outline of two women, both of whom were kneeling beside a prostrate figure wrapped in a Highlander’s plaid. Hearing his voice, the nearer of the two, Catriona Moray, rose to her feet, handing the horn drinking vessel, from which she had been attempting to spoon some liquid into her patient’s mouth, to her companion.

  “He is very severely wounded,” she offered, in explanation, as she drew Phillip to one side. “Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr Hazard.”

  “I’m at your service, Miss—er—Miss Moray.”

  “So Sergeant MacCorkill has told you who I am. Has he also told you how I come to be here?” Her question was softly voiced and Phillip inclined his head. “I insisted on his telling me. It’s not his fault—I refused to come, until he did.”

  Catriona Moray’s fine brows rose in a faintly surprised curve. “I do not mind your knowing, Mr Hazard. I should have told you myself, had there been an opportunity, for it was not my wish to deceive you. What else did the Sergeant tell you?”

  “Only that you had a favour to ask of me.” Phillip hesitated, regarding her uncertainly. She looked pale and exhausted, he saw, and there were ominous stains on the front of the apron she had donned to cover her dress. As if in answer to his unspoken question, Catriona said quietly, “We have been to the battlefield, I and the other women, doing what we could. What tragically little we could …” She caught her breath and Phillip saw pain in her lovely, smoke-blue eyes, a pain that no words could assuage. “There were so many, Mr Hazard.”

  “I know,” Phillip returned gently, “I was also there.” He laid a hand on her arm. “What can I do for you, Miss Moray?” When she was silent, fighting to control the tears which had come, unbidden, to her eyes, he added, “I recognized the horse outside, the grey Arab. It belongs to one of General Scarlett’s aides, Captain Sheridan of the Indian Army. Is he perhaps the man you—” but Catriona interrupted him, her voice husky.

  “No. There was an Indian Army captain being treated by the surgeons when I left. They—they were amputating his arm. He was with the wounded of the 11th Hussars and … you know, I expect, what they—what happened to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you”—her eyes lifted to his, still full of tears, searching his face—“did you see the charge they made, Mr Hazard?”

  “No, I did not see it.”

  “They charged the Russian guns,” Catriona whispered brokenly. “They charged straight for them, Mr Hazard. Surely that was madness, to pit men and horses against guns? Yet they are saying that Lord Raglan ordered it!” Her voice shook but she managed to steady it as she went on, “I did not see the charge either but I was told what happened, I—my brother was there, with the Scots Greys. Thank God, he was one of those who came back unscathed. I—I could not believe my eyes when I saw him. He was leading the grey horse you saw outside, Captain Sheridan’s horse, with a wounded trooper in the saddle who … was dead, when Alastair brought him back. He did not know, he was too stunned and shocked to … realize. The Greys did not charge, you know—Lord Lucan held them in reserve, to cover the Light Brigade’s retreat, he said. But it was strange. In my dream it was Alastair I found, I …” She broke off, biting fiercely at her lower lip, a vain attempt to still its quivering. She had momentarily forgotten the favour she wanted to ask of him, Phillip realized and, for the time being at least, had also forgotten the wounded man at the other end of the tent. Feeling her tremble, he put both arms round her, holding her tenderly, as he might have held a frightened child.

  “What dream?” he asked, thinking to distract her.

  Catriona shivered. “A dream that … has haunted me, ever since this war began,” she said. “It was because of the dream that I could not stay in Sebastopol, Mr Hazard. It was always the same dream. I … was walking along a—a narrow valley with some other woman and all about us were wounded men, crying out to us to help them, to give them water, to tend their wounds. Just as they did this evening, except that the cries were more piteous and their wounds more … more hideous than in my dream.”

  Phillip felt her tremble again and his arms tightened instinctively about her slim, shaking body. “Do not speak of it if it is painful for you, Catriona,” he begged, but she shook her head.

  “No, I—I want to speak of it. It is so strange.” Once again, with a great effort, she contrived to steady her voice. “Everything happened as it happened in my dream, save only for the last part. In my dream, there was a man lying alone, with blood on his face and soaking his uniform. He—he was dying and he called out to me by name, asking me to come to him. I knelt beside him and wiped the blood from his face and it … it was my brother, it was Alastair, who thanked me for … for coming to him. He had been afraid, he told me in the dream, afraid to die alone. I … perhaps you think it foolish, to set so much store by a dream but, in the Highlands, we do set much store by dreams. And Alastair is my twin, you see. Twins, identical twins, have a special sort of relationship, a special closeness. Each knows what is happening to the other, even when they are apart and, if one is hurt, the other feels his pain.”

  “I have heard that,” Phillip observed, when she again lapsed into silence. “But it was not your brother you found, was it? You told me that he was unhurt.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she admitted.

  “Well, then?” Phillip urged, still as if he were endeavouring to offer consolation to a child. “The dream differed from the reality, did it not? It was wrong.”

  Catriona stared at him, clearly shocked by his scepticism. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, “The dream wasn’t wrong. The—the man was lying there, just as I had seen him a hundred times before, and he called out to me. He asked me to help him. It was already dark and we had only a few lanterns between us. Morag was carrying one and I took it from her as I went to kneel beside the poor wounded man and … and wipe the blood from his face. He was lying somewhat apart from the others, alone. I think he must have lain there for a long time unnoticed, on the hillside up which the Greys and the rest of the Heavy Cavalry Brigade charged this morning. Or perhaps, when they were searching for wounded, they believed him dead, because they brought many Russian wounded to the field hospitals. I saw them there, being cared for with our own men.”

  “Russians?” Phillip echoed, startled. He glanced over to where the wounded man was lying, with Morag MacCorkill still patiently attempti
ng to force a few drops of liquid between his tightly closed lips. “But …” His eyes had grown accustomed to the lantern-light now and he noticed that a gold-laced green cavalry jacket had been spread across the all-enveloping plaid by which the injured man was covered.

  There was something familiar about the be-frogged uniform and about the gold aiguilette which, though stained and all but hacked in two, still hung by one of its tarnished cords from the shoulder of the jacket. The uniform was patently not British and the aiguilette denoted a high ranking officer in the Russian Army, an imperial aide-de-camp, and Phillip felt himself stiffen, unwilling to believe the evidence of his own eyes, his mind rejecting the possibility of so fantastic a coincidence as he turned to face Catriona once more.

  “He is a Russian officer, is he not?” he demanded, his tone harsh.

  “Yes,” she admitted, offering no explanation.

  “And you brought him here! In heaven’s name, why? Surely, in the circumstances, you—”

  “He is dying,” Catriona put in, a catch in her voice. “Cannot you see that, Mr Hazard? Would you have had me fail to show mercy and compassion to a fallen enemy?”

  Remembering the compassion with which the Governor of Odessa had treated him, following his own capture, Phillip was compelled to shake his head. “No, Miss Moray. But would it not have been wiser to have taken him to one of the field hospitals where they—”

  Again she interrupted him. “Where they have no cure, save amputation? His left leg is gangrenous—the surgeons would have insisted on taking it off. And to what purpose? That would not save or prolong his life, it would not. In any case, the field hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties, as you must have seen for yourself. The surgeons are desperately hard pressed—they have no time to spare for the dying, Mr Hazard, and no means of alleviating their suffering. One of them, a cavalry surgeon, told me as much”—she spoke with controlled bitterness—“when I sought his help. It was on his advice that I—that I acted so unwisely in bringing this officer here. But here, at least, he can die in peace.”