The Queen at War

by K. A. S. Quinn

  The elegant man sitting opposite Felix nodded vigorously. ‘You are so right. They need, they must, trust in the power of the cavalry. Even now the siege of Sebastopol is all infantry and cannons. This is not true military finesse. Lucan must use us, decisively, in action.’

  Felix smiled – it made him look almost angelic, but it made Katie shiver.

  ‘And you, Captain Nolan,’ Felix continued, ‘you who have written more than one excellent book on the tactics of the cavalry. They are fools not to turn to you for advice. You must make them listen. In the very next battle, the cavalry must take centre-stage. Go over Lord Lucan’s head. Speak to Lord Cardigan – even Lord Raglan if you must. You can, you know, put yourself in a position to make this happen. Then everyone will see your fine abilities. You will become a national hero – I will make certain of that.’

  Captain Nolan liked what he heard. ‘With your influence we can overcome even the top echelons of the military,’ he added. ‘And with Lord Twisted’s help . . .’

  Felix laughed, a high-pitched and ugly sound. ‘Lord Twisted? If you desire the help of Lord Twisted you’ll need to ask for it in the Russian camp. Lord Twisted is more likely to hang than to be of help!’

  Jack came up behind Katie. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you eat like a man, and clean like a charwoman. What other hidden talents do you have?’ He stopped smiling when he saw the look in her eyes.

  ‘Who is that man?’ she asked. ‘Talking to the boy with the blond curls?’

  ‘That is Captain Nolan,’ he told her, ‘one of the finest horsemen in the Crimea. If only his temperament matched his other abilities! I avoid him as much as possible.’

  Katie’s heart sank; Felix had found an excellent target. Should she tell someone about this? She looked over to their table, but both Mary Seacole and William Howard Russell were gone. ‘Where is Russell?’ she asked Jack. ‘I’d like to speak to him.’

  ‘You’re too late,’ Jack replied. ‘He received a scribbled message from camp, and is already on his way back. He must report on Sebastopol for The Times. I too must leave, immediately.’

  She looked at Jack – he was so like James – a less brilliant, more likeable version of James; and that bit more grown up. Yet his eyes were still those of a boy. She didn’t know exactly how she felt about Jack, but she knew she didn’t want him to get hurt.

  ‘Your regiment,’ she said, ‘it’s the . . .’

  ‘17th Lancers,’ he laughed. ‘For an intelligent girl, you certainly have no military brain.’

  ‘Are you in the cavalry?’ she asked.

  Jack shook his head. ‘You really don’t know anything, do you? Yes, the 17th Lancers is part of the Light Brigade, and yes, that’s the cavalry – the best division the cavalry has.’

  Her heart sank. ‘Jack, if there’s a battle, you mustn’t rush forward,’ she said. ‘You must wait, be patient – don’t mistake stupidity for bravery.’

  For a moment he looked angry, but then his glance softened. ‘Women and war,’ he said, ‘they’re not made for each other. The 17th Lancers have waited and waited. We long to fight, and Katie, fight we will.’

  She thought about telling him now – about Felix and who or what he really was; about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. She wanted to tell him her own story too, but she could hear herself, inside her head, and every sentence she tried to form sounded crazy.

  Jack took her hand. ‘War is our job, Katie. Men must to work, and women must weep. But Katie, crying doesn’t suit you. I like to think that we will have much time to laugh together.’ He turned quite red, and giving her hand a final squeeze, bowed and was gone.

  Mary Seacole returned; a stack of dirty dishes piled in her apron. ‘Men must to work, and women must weep,’ she echoed in her sing-song voice. ‘He’s right, that fine young man, but at least he goes to work with a full stomach and a full heart – thanks to the British Hotel. Now, child, dry your eyes and give me a hand with this washing. Lord but women have work too. Then we need to make up a batch of capsaicin salve and decant some bitter sherry. The bombardment of Sebastopol is bad enough; but I smell another battle coming and it don’t smell good.’

  They worked late into the night, in Mary Seacole’s little kitchen, with the vats of bubbling syrups and the dried red peppers hanging in swags. These she used to make her capsaicin salve, and the fumes as they boiled made Katie’s eyes sting with a different kind of tears. ‘I should think Miss Nightingale would have enjoyed seeing this,’ she commented.

  ‘Florence,’ snorted Mary Seacole, ‘Florence don’t go in for making ointments. She hates fussing in the kitchen, and she don’t much like bending over soldiers and soothing their brows either.’

  Katie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘But she’s a nurse, the greatest nurse in history. I mean, you’re good too, but . . .’

  Mary Seacole laughed. ‘I am a far better nurse than Florence Nightingale. But she has that something else. She does think like a man. For her, it’s all about the numbers and the shapes. She sees the big ideas and then makes them work in the day-to-day world. She pushes that brain of hers till it succeeds. Me? I see to the little things, the comforts, the womanly things. I’m like a mother to these men.’

  Katie stirred the large pot and wiped the vapour from her face. ‘But you’re both trying to see something that’s – I don’t know – it’s either the past, or the future, or some other world entirely. This I kind of know. And for some reason you need me, to see it better. I can’t tell you how much this creeps me out.’

  Mary Seacole looked at her for a very long time. Beads of perspiration stood on her brown forehead and seeped into the deep crow’s feet around her eyes. But all she said was, ‘We need to cool those peppers now, and push them through a muslin cloth – Lordie, but we’ll sleep well tonight.’

  Throughout the night the heavy artillery of the British army continued to fire on Sebastopol. Katie did not sleep well, and when she did sleep, the events of the past days flashed through her mind. She could see Alice in her nun’s habit and hoped James was looking after her. Then Jack stared up at Katie; his eyes first merry, then angry, then blank. Pain and panic swept through her. ‘Jack!’ she cried, ‘have I lost you?’ and a sing-song voice replied, ‘Lost for now, but found again, in another place and another time. Tempus fugit, libertati viam facere. Time flies, making a road to freedom.’

  Then, in her dream, Katie was filled with light. But it was neither warm nor comforting. The light was like wires in her blood – sharp, cold, relentless and cruel. The persistent voice of Lucia pulsed through her body. ‘The eve of battle,’ Lucia cried with a high, clarion call. ‘On the morrow, the British horses shall thunder below, and the skies shall flash above. The two wars shall rage, two wars from two worlds, the Verus and the Malum. The Chosen and the Tempus will meet.’

  ‘It is coming,’ Katie murmured, ‘it is coming, but do – oh, do make it stop.’ Then Jack’s voice came to her, no longer laughing, but a dark and sorrowful dirge, repeating over and over. ‘Men must to work, and women must weep.’

  She tossed and turned, helpless in her sleep. ‘I want to go home!’ she cried. ‘I want to go home!’

  The dream changed, as dreams will. She was home, but no relief came to Katie. Women must weep. In Apartment 11C someone was crying out in protest and pain. It was a woman, weeping and weeping. The woman was Mimi.

  The Two Battles

  Was it possible to be awakened by silence? Sometime before dawn the guns had stopped. This was as unnerving as the muffled thuds of the previous day. Katie opened her eyes to find Mary Seacole seated in the dark. ‘I was just about to wake you,’ she said. ‘We have to make a start, but I knew you needed the strength that sleep will give. It’s going to be a taxing day.’

  ‘How long have you been up?’ Katie asked.

  Mary Seacole laughed. ‘At my age we need less sleep. Once you’d gone to bed, I set to cutting sandwiches and wrapping up the fowls, the tongues and the ham. There’s wine and spirits to
o; they’re already packed on the mules.’

  Katie dressed quickly and Mary Seacole handed her a large canvas bag. ‘It’s for the wounded,’ Mary Seacole told her. ‘Lint, bandages, needles, thread and the medicines we’ve been making.’ At the last moment, Katie grabbed the walking stick; its powers might be useful in whatever was to come. Outside stood two mules, weighed down with supplies. Two more were saddled for Katie and Mary Seacole. They left the British Hotel as dawn broke.

  It was a crisp autumn day. The sunlight poured down straight and direct, turning the sky an odd, flat blue. The world seemed strangely bright, but somehow only two-dimensional.

  ‘Just as I sensed, something’s afoot,’ Mary Seacole muttered. ‘Even the weather is all wrong.’

  Katie didn’t ask where they were going. In the first place, she wouldn’t have understood. The geography of the Crimea was beyond her. Besides, Mary Seacole had what Katie would call ‘street smarts’. She was cunning, was known to tell a lie and definitely dabbled in some kind of voodoo. But Katie also knew she was a kind woman, with a big heart. If Katie had to face some kind of weird destiny, she wanted to do it with Mary Seacole at her side.

  They followed the road between Balaclava and Sebastopol. The land rose sharply, and the mules groaned under their loads. At last they reached a plateau that lay between the valley of Balaclava and the trenches of the British forces. This was the site of the cannon fire; here lay the source of the siege. For now, the cannons were silent.

  They dismounted their mules, and Katie made certain to hold onto the walking stick. She was amazed to find the plateau was already crowded with people. Soldiers just relieved from the trenches mixed with men in tweeds more suited to a shooting party. The ladies shaded themselves from the autumn sun with parasols.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ she asked Mary Seacole.

  ‘War tourists,’ Mary Seacole practically spat. ‘They come to experience war, as if it were a theatre, a pantomime, or a cruise along the Thames. A useless waste of space, that’s what I call them.’

  William Howard Russell pushed his way through the crowds. ‘I’m in agreement, Mary Seacole,’ he added. ‘Isn’t there something in those capacious canvas bags of yours that you could give them? A fowl laced with arsenic, a cordial that produces dysentery?’

  Katie laughed; she was getting the hang of Russell’s Irish humour. ‘Why are they all here?’ she asked.

  ‘Mary Seacole has a nose for conflict,’ Russell said. ‘And conflict is what we’re about to get. The siege of Sebastopol has failed. Our military commanders thought it would take a day, several days at worst. But the Russians have dug in and built walls of mud around their city – and those walls have blocked our cannon fire. We can’t surround Sebastopol completely, we don’t have enough men. In setting up the siege, we’ve stretched our line of defence too far.’

  Katie was used to a different kind of war: airplanes without pilots, that dropped bombs on whole villages; nuclear arms that could kill millions – wars that substituted weaponry for men. This was a war that depended on the men, and the sacrifice of their lives to attain victory. ‘What happens next?’ she asked.

  Russell fished his field glasses out of his rucksack, and peered into the valley beneath them. ‘The Russians are better strategists that we think,’ he said. ‘All our supplies for the siege are coming in by sea, from the harbour of Balaclava. The Russians are marching on Balaclava to try and cut us off from our supplies. They’ve already taken several of our defensive positions, and our guns. Directly below us is the only passable route to the harbour. I reckon that will be their next target. We can see it all from here – a bird’s eye view.’

  A woman’s cry rang out, and Russell, despite his contempt for the war tourists, sprang to assist. Katie recognized the theatrical troupe that had travelled to Scutari with her on the Vectis. Her pulse raced as she spotted the Little Angel. The Countess Fidelia had stumbled on a stone and fallen hard. William Howard Russell helped her to her feet, and then, to Katie’s surprise, embraced her. ‘Well, if it isn’t Mary Murphy, light of the Dublin stage, and admired throughout Europe as the Countess Fidelia.’

  The Countess Fidelia did not take affront. ‘My old friend Billy Russell,’ she cried. ‘God knows I’m pleased to see a friendly face, and such a well-fed one too!’ But the joy of seeing a friend turned to agony as she tried to stand straight. ‘Oh, but I’ve given my ankle a twist. I don’t think I can stand.’

  Russell turned to the others. ‘I covered the famine in Ireland for The Times. The Countess here trod the boards night after night, touring the country to raise funds for the starving poor. It was an honour for us, to be entertained by such as she. She has won the hearts of many a royal sovereign, and emptied several of their pockets along the way.’

  The Countess Fidelia leaned against him, half laughing at the chance meeting, half crying from the pain of her ankle. ‘Ebb and flow,’ she said. ‘Life is always an ebb and flow. Truly, I’ve entertained kings and queens, but I’ve had my share of street life as well.’

  Russell helped the Countess to a carriage filled with ladies. After many exclamations, and several protests from the silk-clad war tourists, he was able to procure her a seat with them.

  Katie seized this opportunity, and slipped over to the Little Angel. This might be her only chance to really find out. Even getting near the Little Angel made Katie feel strange; she had a kind of glow – not hurtful, like Felix’s, but warm and tingly. ‘You know, I’m sorry, I just wanted to . . .’ Katie began awkwardly, and then blurted out, ‘Do you know me?’

  The Little Angel’s eyes became even larger. She stood very still. And then she took Katie’s hand in hers. ‘Everything but your name,’ the Little Angel replied. ‘I’ve known you for hundreds of years. And I certainly recognize your walking stick . . .’

  A wave of relief washed over Katie. For the first time in her life, she could talk to one of her own kind. Princess Alice was as understanding as anyone could be, and Katie had won James over with time. But here before her was someone who had experienced what she had, knew how she felt and could share her burden. ‘I’m Katie Berger-Jones-Burg,’ she said. ‘It’s scary, isn’t it? The seeing stuff, the knowing stuff.’

  The Little Angel nodded. ‘I’ve seen so much – war and revolution, plague and famine. I’m frightened and sickened by much of what I see. Perhaps it is a gift, to be part of the Tempus. But at times I am angry – it’s as if I am being used, just a tool in their Great Experiment.’

  Katie tightened her grasp of the Little Angel’s hand. ‘So you are the Chosen – the Tempus? I thought so. You know about Lucia and the Verus, Belzen and the Malum?’

  The Little Angel smiled sadly. ‘Not everything, but enough.’

  They had begun their conversation in the middle, the way twins talk. Katie couldn’t believe that she finally had an ally. ‘Are they here? Lucia, Belzen?’ Katie asked. It struck her that the Little Angel wasn’t little any more. It was difficult to place her age. She seemed several years younger than Katie, but the look on her face was far from childlike. It was, indeed, hundreds of years old.

  ‘Do you get it?’ Katie quizzed her. ‘That the Verus need our form of communication to live, that’s why war has to be stopped? And the Malum – they feed off brute force, so they want this war? Belzen especially wants a war to end the world.’

  ‘I get it, as you say,’ the Little Angel replied. ‘And I’ve had more time, so I know much more.’

  Katie thought she’d never seen a person look so sad. Was it to be her own fate to become this sad? ‘Can we get free of them?’ she asked.

  The Little Angel shook her head. ‘I don’t believe we can, and I’m not certain we should. What Lucia and the Verus want of me is not such a bad thing. I shouldn’t have spoken of feeling sad, of being used. Lucia wants peace and I can help – it’s my reason for being. This battle is important. I have a purpose and today it will unfold.’

  They were interrupted by a
burst of cannon fire. The battle had begun. Katie moved to the edge of the ridge and looked down. Beneath her was the valley, leading to the port of Balaclava. The sea sparkled in the distance. The Russian infantry advanced with solemn stateliness up the valley. They looked powerful, threatening. Was Jack going to fight them? As she peered down, squinting, William Howard Russell seemed to read her mind. ‘Yes, he’s down there,’ he said, with some sympathy in his voice. He rummaged in his pockets, and came up with a spare set of field glasses. ‘Look through these,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the cavalry forming up directly below. That bright line of red is the 93rd Highlanders. Sir Colin Campbell and his men will be our main defence of Balaclava.’

  Sound echoed from the valley. Between the cannon bursts one could hear the champing of bits and the clink of sabres in the valley below. The Russians drew breath for a moment, and then in one grand line dashed at the Highlanders. There seemed to be so many Russians, and just a thin line of Highlanders to defend the British position. What, Katie thought, could this little wall of men do against such numbers and such speed?

  Russell stood beside her, tense and watching. ‘Steady now, Sir Colin,’ he muttered. ‘You have something those Russians don’t – the Minié. No one else has such a powerful and precise rifle.’ As the Russians swept up the valley, Sir Colin Campbell rode along the line, calling on his men to ‘stand firm and die there’. Above them, Russell, Katie, Mary Seacole and the Little Angel stood stark still, as the mass of Russians galloped on. The small number of Highlanders looked like a thin red streak, tipped with a line of steel.

  At around 1,000 yards the Highlanders fired their first volley, but the Russians continued on. The Highlanders fired a second time, but the Russians were undeterred. It was only with the third volley of rifle fire that the Russians wavered. They pulled up, surprised by the accuracy of the Minié rifle. Then they bent sharply to their left and rode back towards their own men.