the first novella in the trilogy telling how he became the Scarlet Thief
As pot boy at his mother’s infamous London gin palace, Jack Lark is no stranger to trouble. But when an unlikely ally draws him from the dark alleys of the East End into the bright lights of a masked ball, he gets a glimpse of another life. That life, once seen, is impossible to forget.
Jack will do anything to outwit, outsmart and escape the cruelty in his own home. He is determined to get out, but what price will he be forced to pay for his freedom?
Chapter One
20 September 1854. The banks of the Alma River, Crimean Peninsula
The redcoats staggered to a bloody halt. The men of the King’s Royal Fusiliers crouched at the edge of the vineyard, ducking and twisting as the storm of shot, shell and bullet tore through their ranks. Dozens of fusiliers went down under the Russian barrage, the men falling silently, their passing unremarked. Those still living pressed close to their comrades, the desperate need to be near to another human being overwhelming the rational thought that to be grouped together was to present a larger target for the enemy to hit.
Beyond the shattered vineyard there was no cover for the frightened fusiliers; a dozen yards of open scrub separated the last of the vines from the shallow banks of the Alma River. The bloodied redcoats clung to what little shelter they could find, stubbornly refusing to advance, no one willing to dare the killing ground to their front.
On their right, the men of the 2nd Division were going to ground, the heavy fire driving its battered battalions to seek cover in the ruined walls and burning buildings that were all that remained of the village of Burliuk. All along the line, the redcoats milled in confusion and fear, still yards short of the river they had been ordered to cross. The Russians poured on the fire ruthlessly, striking redcoat after redcoat to the ground, their bodies forming a tide line, a high-water mark for the advance.
General Raglan’s army was paying in blood for the simplicity of his plan. His decision to fling two of his divisions against the strongest point on the Russians’ right flank was the cause of the suffering being endured by the men who had been ordered forward. It was a plan devoid of all subtlety. A plan that now looked destined to fail.
Jack Lark forced a path through his men. He saw the terror on the faces of the fusiliers, a fear that he knew well as it seared through his own veins. It threatened to drive him screaming to the ground. It begged him to do anything to get out of the merciless fire that swept along the stalled line, yet he made himself move, even though his body flinched at every bullet that whipped past.
‘Fusiliers!’ Jack’s voice was huge. ‘Advance, damn you! Move! Move!’
Still the fusiliers refused to advance. Jack shoved at the men closest to him, trying to force them forward. But they ignored him, their eyes flashing in anger as he tried to bully them. The fusiliers were not advancing for anyone.
The men started to edge backwards, the movement fluttering through the packed ranks. The battalion was moments away from turning to flee from the unrelenting Russian fire that was flaying their ranks.
They had reached breaking point.
Jack cringed as a bullet cracked into the ground at his feet. The fear was paralysing him, ravaging his guts like a caged beast. Every part of him shrank away from what he was about to do. His mind pleaded with him to let someone else carry the burden of responsibility. Yet he had chosen to become an officer and now he would have to repay the debt that came with the gold epaulets and the respect that came from being addressed as ‘Sir’.
He shouldered his way through the snug pocket of men to his front, ignoring the oaths and the insults directed at him. He strode out of the vineyard and into the cauldron of fire.
‘King’s Royal Fusiliers!’
He turned to his men, his fury building, the anger driving out the last of his uncertainty. He might have stolen the right to command these men but now he would prove he could lead them. He goaded the enemy fire, prowling in front of his company, showing them he was bigger than the storm of fire that had bludgeoned the slow, steady advance to a standstill.
‘King’s Royal Fusiliers! Look at me!’ Jack demanded attention even as the Russian fire cracked and whipped through the air around him.
‘We will advance. You hear me? We will advance!’ His voice faltered, his throat half closed. Yet he forced the order out, screaming the words at his men who watched him as if they were staring at an inmate of Bedlam let loose on the field of battle.
Jack turned his back on his men and bounded across the few open yards between the vineyard and the river. It felt as if every Russian skirmisher was firing at him but by some miracle he made it to the shallow bank of the river without coming to harm. As he slipped and slithered down the bank, he turned to glare in accusation at his men.
The fusiliers were stationary, as if petrified.
Then, finally, they moved. Prompted by a secret signal the battalion surged forward. The open ground that had caused such fear was crossed in moments, the fusiliers streaming forward to slide down to join Jack in the shallow water of the Alma. The Russian fire doubled in its intensity the moment the fusiliers abandoned the shelter of the vineyard, striking dozens from their ranks. Yet the redcoats ignored the casualties, storming forward, their paralysing fear forgotten.
They had crossed the line.
In the melee, Jack was pitched unceremoniously forward. The river flowed over the tops of his boots, the water icy cold where it splashed against his legs. The fusiliers careered through the water, the ordered line forgotten, the men moving together in one amorphous mass. The wiser heads among the redcoats lifted their ammunition pouches and rifles away from a soaking in the river but they were few in number amidst the crazed, adrenalin-fuelled mob.
The gravel bed of the river was treacherous, the weeds and slime making the footing uncertain and twice Jack slipped and would have fallen if he had not been so tightly pressed into the pack of redcoats. Around him, his men cursed angrily as they forced their way across the river, elbows working furiously, fighting each other to reach the relative safety of the south side of the Alma. The south bank was far steeper than the north side, rising three to four feet before levelling out and forming a shelf above the river. The redcoats threw themselves up the slope with abandon, churning the ground to slick mud as they tried to find purchase with their wet boots.
On the ledge the fusiliers were screened from much of the Russian fire. Above their heads, the awful barrage continued. To move forward would mean walking straight into the enemy roundshot and musket fire.
For a second time, the advance halted. The wet, mud-splattered fusiliers caught their breath after the wild scramble through the river and steeled themselves for what was still to come.
‘You bloody idiot!’ Jack’s orderly, Tommy Smith, thumped into the ground beside his officer, ducking away from a flurry of musket fire that whistled past less than a foot above their heads. ‘You’ll get yourself killed if you carry on like that, Jack.’
‘It had to be done.’ The shock of walking into the open ground still coursed through Jack’s body and he shivered at the memory. He felt the cold hand of near death.
‘But not by you, you damn fool.’ Smith had to shout to be heard above the din. ‘You might be dressed as a bloody Rupert but that doesn’t mean you have to do it all by yourself!’
A flurry of activity prevented Jack from replying. Another officer was indeed taking control, showing his men what he expected of them.
General William John Codrington was fifty years old. He had joined the army thirty-three years previously, yet this was his first taste of action, the only time he had heard guns fired in anger. Codrington commanded the 1st Fusilier Brigade, part of the once famous Light Division. Although it was no longer made up from the same regiments that had marched to such renown and fame in the battles Wellington had fought in Portugal and Spain forty year earlier, Codrington was determined his command would live up to their high standards. He had watche
d his brigade march into the violent storm of the Russian barrage and he had witnessed their desperate plunge into the Alma. Now he had to show his men what he expected them to do next.
Mounted on a small white Arab mare, Codrington spurred his way across the river, encouraging the young horse up the far bank. The men of his command watched the grey-haired general charge straight into the terrible fire that was raging above them.
Jack looked on in astonishment. He flashed a smile at Tommy Smith and then, saying a silent prayer, he pushed himself up over the lip of the shelf, determined to be at the head of the attack.
With a huge cheer, the redcoats followed.
The steep undulating slope led up to the four-foot-high wall of the great redoubt, the fortified position that was the key to the Russian general’s right flank. The Russian skirmishers had moved back up the slope and were already re-forming on the crest around the guns hidden in the redoubt. It was up this slope that Codrington’s brigade would have to advance, into the mouths of the guns that waited to sweep the attackers away.
‘Forward the fusiliers!’ Jack screamed, leading his men up the slope. Around him, the fusiliers were horribly disordered, the different companies now hopelessly intertwined after the mad scramble across the river. The precise two-man line was gone and the redcoats moved forward bunched up in groups. The angle of the slope pulled at their already aching muscles. In the middle of the disorganised crush the young ensigns carrying the colours found the strength to wave their heavy ash staffs from side to side, forcing movement into the lifeless silk that refused to stir in the still, breathless air.
As the three battalions of Codrington’s brigade erupted from the confines of the river, the attack snarled back into life.
Jack Lark: Recruit (A Jack Lark Short Story) Page 9
