Crossman turned and looked. In the dim dusty shadows of the far right-hand corner stood a magnificent object. It was a gleaming brass swivel gun mounted on the front of a polished leather saddle. The saddle itself was a work of art, being etched with symbols and hanging with tassels, and folds of embroidered Indian cloth, both colourful and decorative. Leather straps splayed out from the saddle like the tentacles of a stranded octopus. There were leather knobs on the front and back of the saddle and a carved, curved wooden supporting frame, rather like the skeleton of an upturned boat, gave the whole thing a sense of rigidity and stability.
‘Beautiful thing, isn’t it?’ said Hawke, dreamily. ‘Exotic and deadly. Some call ’em falconets. No idea why. Not into semantics. So, I’ve got a man out looking for a decent camel. Not sure what condition it’ll be in, you know that beasts of burden are hard to come by here, but I’ll purchase him outright and have him sent over to you with a handler. I want you to test this idea out, sergeant. Make it work. Could be useful when we go into Sebastopol.’
‘Sir?’
Hawke gave Crossman a look as if to say that his patience was rapidly thinning.
‘If we have to fight street to street, we won’t be able to use the RHA, will we? Some of those streets and alleys are remarkably narrow. But a dromedary could get down them. Think man, we could be pioneering something new in the way of skirmishing in built-up areas! This is your chance to shine, sergeant. It’s something I could put you forward for. The other work, sabotage etcetera, we have to keep under out hats. But the general staff would approve of something like this.’
Crossman tried to wriggle out from under. ‘Are you sure we’re the right people for the job, sir. I mean, the cavalry . . .’
‘The cavalry are already too big for their boots. This is our project, sergeant. I’ll speak with you again later, when you’ve had a chance to assess things. Dismissed.’
Crossman gave his colonel a steady salute and marched out of the room.
When the camel arrived it was not the he that the colonel had continually referred to, but was definitely of the female gender. It stood in the doorway, blocking any entrances or exits by humans. Its handler, a young Tartar boy, was outside squatting on the ground, looking through the creature’s legs at the interior of the hovel. He seemed to Peterson to be a little possessive, for his eyes kept flicking towards Gwilliams, also on the outside of the room, who patted the camel’s neck affectionately.
Yorwarth, on the inside with Peterson and the still bed-ridden Wynter, said, ‘Peterson, you won’t be so lonely now – there’s another lady in the peloton.’
Peterson stared at the dromedary as it stood chewing some unidentifiable cud. The camel stared back, still working its rubbery jaws. Its brown eyes were huge and fathomless. There was wisdom in there, or stupidity, it was difficult to tell. Certainly mystery. If Peterson had been the sort of woman who worried about her looks, she would have been jealous of the camel’s eyes, which were huge and dreamy. The beast’s coat smelled, of course, clinkered as it was with dung of various colours and strengths.
While Peterson was staring, the beast suddenly changed its expression, spread its back legs, and began to pee. The steaming piss fell in a great torrent – and it fell and it fell and it fell, forming an immense pool in the doorway. The whole operation took a long age. Peterson could not believe the amount of liquid that came out. Finally the stream slowed to a dribble, then ceased altogether, the camel letting out a grunted sigh of satisfaction.
‘Aw, Christ, look at that, will you?’ cried Wynter, rolling on his side. ‘What a stink.’
‘Doesn’t smell that bad,’ Yorwarth said. ‘Anyway, mate, I hear you’re the one who’s being put in charge of her, so the sergeant said.’
Yorwarth should have kept his mouth shut, because Crossman was descending the stairs at the time.
‘No,’ said the sergeant, ‘that’s your job, Yorwarth.’
‘Why me?’ cried the indignant private.
‘Because you come from Australia.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ the young man began scratching furiously at his eczema.
‘Gwilliams has probably never seen a camel before, have you Gwilliams?’
‘No, sergeant.’
‘And Peterson and Wynter only know plough horses. Now, Australia has camels, I know that for a fact. Imports, perhaps, but definitely there. Therefore you are the most likely candidate for the job. You, Yorwarth, are the camel-rough-rider of this peloton. You will learn to handle the artillery. You will ride the beast. That’s an order. Now,’ Crossman went forward, just as the handling boy was moving the camel out of the doorway, ‘what’s her name? We can’t keep referring to her as it, she might be offended. Camels, I am reliably informed, have rather vicious tempers. Don’t turn your back on her, or she might take a chunk out of your neck.’
Yorwarth muttered, ‘Now, he tells me.’
‘Right,’ Crossman said, turning to the Tartar boy, ‘let’s see who these two are, how old and who they belong to.’
Crossman spoke to the Tartar boy, who replied with the gravity of an elderly man. He told him the camel was three years of age, so far as he knew, and that her name was Vysehrad. He himself was nine and his name was Stikchuk but the British soldier-men had shortened it to Stik. His mother had lived in a village in the hills, until it had been burned down by the Russians when they retreated to Sebastopol. Now he and his mother lived in a shack at the back of Kadikoi. Stik said he was a proud man, his father had been a worker in the vineyards, but the vineyards had fallen into disuse and his father had gone to Yalta for work.
‘The boy’s name is Stik,’ said Crossman to his men, ‘and I want him treated well. No bullying – are you listening, Wynter? He’s not here to look after you lot, he’s here to look after the camel, whose name . . .’ They would never cope with Vysehrad. ‘Whose name is Betsy. I want Betsy treated with every courtesy too. She is our gun carriage. Colonel Hawke wants us to assess Betsy with her cannon, and that’s what we’ll do.’
While he was talking with his men, Crossman saw Rupert Jarrard striding towards the hovel. He raised his hand to acknowledge a wave from the correspondent. Crossman noticed Jarrard was wearing his highly polished leather holster bearing a Navy Colt rather ostentatiously on his hip, as if he expected to use it at a moment’s notice. The sergeant guessed this was probably to do with the presence of Campbell. No doubt the revolver was a sign to the revenge-seeking captain, to tell him that he would have no easy task if he challenged Jarrard to a duel. Jarrard’s casual method of wearing the firearm proclaimed his proficiency with it.
When the American reached him, the pair shook hands and then went inside and up the stairs to be in private.
‘Is that your camel?’ asked Jarrard in amazement. ‘Did you win him in a game of poker?’
‘Very close,’ replied Crossman, offering Jarrard a seat on his cot, ‘it was actually our friend Campbell who won the saddle-gun in a game of cards and brought it with him from India. The camel has been supplied to fit the saddle. We are to test the pair of them out together.’
‘Rather you than me.’
Crossman lit his chibouque pipe and began puffing smoke.
‘Well then Rupert, are you still avoiding Campbell?’
Jarrard grinned. ‘I’m still holed up amongst the French. But, Jack, give me your congratulations, I’m deeply in love.’
Suddenly a pang went through Crossman. He was suspicious. Jarrard had been out riding a lot with Jane. Was it Jane to whom he was referring?
He said, stiffly, ‘My best wishes, Rupert. Who is the lady?’
‘Why, I have met the most . . . Wait, let me tell you from the beginning. Last week I went to a performance in that little theatre the French have set up. Not one of your bawdy shows, but a concert, with three violinists and a cello or two. I can’t remember exactly. There was this lady violinist – I tell you, Jack, she played like an angel . . .’
All rancour
gone, Crossman said flippantly, ‘You are intimate with celestial musicians?’
‘String sonata number five, in E flat. Rossini. You should have heard it, Jack – you should have seen her. She is a lovely creature, Monique, with exquisite hands – you have never seen such long slim fingers – and they way her wrist curved while she played – swans’ necks don’t come into it – and she was lost in her music, Jack. Lost in a wonderland of beautiful notes, majestic melodies. Her eyes were closed most of the time she was playing and swaying with the music, but when she opened them – it was like being kicked in the chest by a horse – it knocked all the breath out of me.’
‘You have such a turn of phrase.’
‘Laugh, Jack, laugh. I don’t give a damn. I have found the woman who has at last put the word marriage into my vocabulary. Monique Foudre. Maybe you wouldn’t approve of her, Jack. She’s not from any grand European family. I guess you might say she’s common, but I’m no Southern aristocrat myself.’
‘You do me an injustice, Rupert. I have never considered breeding an essential asset. A little intellect, perhaps, and a few table manners. No freckles of course, you realize that the Fates oppose freckles, while blonde hair is de rigueur. Wynter is unaware of the fashion, having taken a wife to himself with dark hair, albeit streaked with grey. Mary is gold itself, but her table etiquette is wanting a little. You couldn’t vouch that she would not steal the salt cellar from under your nose without a by-your-leave.’
‘You’re still making fun of me, Jack. Well, that’s a discredit to you, you know. Monique is sweet and warm. She behaves impeccably at the table, and her voice is delightful. Not one of those harsh smoky voices you sometimes hear from French women. Lyrical is how I’d put her. In French of course – she doesn’t have any English. I’m not great at French, but I’m learning fast. I call her the imp. She has an impish look about her.’
Crossman asked, ‘What is she doing, here in the Crimea?’
‘Entertaining the soldiers. The French are much better set up than you people, y’know. They’ve got everything over there.’
‘Good for them.’
‘Now, don’t go all huffy on me, Jack. It’s not your fault the British Army is a disorganized rabble. Now, what have you got to offer me?’
The two men were avidly interested in inventions. They competed with one another, in various ways, mostly by putting up inventors from their own or chosen nationality. Crossman was half-Scot, half-English – or so he liked to believe. Jarrard was all American, with a touch of Swedish. Crossman believed that all the great inventors were Scots, with a few Italians and Frenchmen on the periphery, and the odd Englishman.
‘Two men I haven’t mentioned to you before – Cook and Wheatstone. You know we now have this telegraph link between the Crimea and our lords and masters back home? Well, the first of those was set up in 1839 I believe, running between Paddington and West Drayton in England. I understand it was the first use of electricity for long-distance communication.’
Jarrard took out a cheroot and lit it with deliberation, before saying, ‘If it hadn’t been for Benjamin Franklin, they wouldn’t have had their electricity to use.’
‘Nonsense, Rupert. Mr Franklin didn’t invent or even discover electricity. It’s true he invented the lightning conductor, but . . .’
‘He explored the nature of electrical forces and furthered the advance of knowledge in static electricity.’
Jarrard’s mouth was set in the way a donkey sets it jaw when it is going to be stubborn. Crossman realized he was on a hiding to nothing. He let the matter drop, even though he knew his sparring partner was blowing smoke rings. There was a lot of affection between the pair and Crossman knew that something was troubling his friend very deeply. What was more, he believed he knew what it was.
‘Rupert, this business with Campbell. It wouldn’t do anyone any good, you know, if you were to seek satisfaction.’
Jarrard drew a heavy sigh and waved away the smoke of his cheroot from the front of his face.
‘ “Seek satisfaction.” What a quaint phrase that is. There’s no satisfaction in killing a man. Even less in being killed by him. No, it wouldn’t do any good and it would probably do a great deal of harm. He would be killed, for you know Jack, I am a deadshot – and I would either be incarcerated by the army or sent packing. In either case I wouldn’t be able to do my job and would then be out of work. He would be dead and I would be jobless. There are others who would be affected of course. Campbell probably has a mother – we all have – and sisters perhaps. Maybe even a wife, though I can’t imagine any woman marrying that popinjay. If he has brothers, they would come after me – they would do in the Americas. It’s all of a piece.’
‘Everything you say is true.’
‘Yes, but Jack,’ Jarrard dropped his cheroot and ground it out with the heel of his boot, ‘in here,’ he punched his own chest, ‘I can’t stand it. Campbell struts about the place defaming my name like the arrogant son-of-a-bitch he is, and I have to hear about it without flinching. I have to listen to some lisping French Hussar tell me they are calling me a coward. I don’t like it, Jack. I don’t like it one bit. It bothers me more than a tad, you know?’
‘You are the better man, Rupert, we both know that.’
‘I would like to put a hole in that man’s forehead.’
‘So would every Russian on the other side of the Inkerman ruins. In fact they would like to put holes in all of us, you included, probably. What I’m trying to say is that at any day, at any time, Captain Campbell may receive what you would like to give him. Why not wait a while and see if that happens, before you throw away your livelihood on a man who doesn’t deserve to destroy you?’
Jarrard tapped Crossman’s knee. ‘You talk a lot of sense, Jack, but sense doesn’t always help in these cases. Emotion. That’s what counts. Pride, anger, hate, those sort of emotions.’
Crossman knew his friend was hurting badly, but he did believe it would do no good to challenge Campbell. Even were the captain to fall and nought said afterwards, there would be others to follow him. Such men, dicers and cardsharps, were strangely popular amongst the junior officers of regiments. Campbell was a handsome dashing man, charismatic in an arrogant sort of way, adored by the ladies, envied by many of his peers. The fact that there was very little between his ears except a cunning memory for the pips on a deck of cards did not diminish his stature in the eyes of his friends. An idle fop owning a wicked skill with weapons: this was the kind of man who was looked up to by the young subalterns and ensigns.
Jarrard left about midnight. Crossman then went down to see how they were coping with their latest recruits. Betsy had been taken to her bed by Stik, who was himself fast asleep on the very hay she was munching. It was a soft night, with soft stars. The guns were silent along the front. Now and again there was the crack of a musket, but the sound almost seemed a part of the tranquillity: full stops to sentences of calm, reminding everyone that, yes, it was a quiet balmy evening, and yes, they should be grateful for it. Death could be everywhere, but actually Creation was in progress, slowly changing the world and its wonders. Things were growing, transforming, mutating. A magnificent moon was rolling imperceptibly across the dark sky, into clouds like bushes, then out again the other side.
Crossman went to bed, stepping through the narrow lanes between the cots on the ground floor.
At around three o’clock he was awoken by an unholy row. Instinctively he reached for the pistol by his bed, having once been attacked in this very room by a Cossack assassin. However the noise was coming from below. He lit a candle quickly and ascertained that Major Lovelace was not in his bed. That much was a relief, for Crossman could hear Wynter’s voice mouthing obscenities. He went to the top of the stairs.
‘Wynter, shut up, or I’ll have Gwilliams put you out.’
Wynter came to the foot of the stairs.
‘It’s her, sergeant,’ he said. ‘She’s bin in the beds of other men.’
&n
bsp; Crossman guessed that her was Mrs Wynter and prayed that the other beds were outside their own quarters.
Wynter continued. ‘She’s as drunk as a bishop’s tart, sergeant, and I can smell it on her. If she an’t bin in other’s beds, how come she’s got the money to buy gin, eh? I ’aven’t given her nothing, so she an’t got it from me. She’s a strumpet, that’s what she is. She don’t know one bed from another and gets in where she pleases. What kind of wife is that for an honest man?’
Crossman half descended the stairs. Looking down into the room where an oil lamp was still sending out a dim light, he could see that Mary was in what looked to be a drunken sleep. Her blouse was awry and her skirt was rucked to her fat thighs, but she looked peaceful and happy.
Fortunately, Wynter’s yelling had not woken any of the other soldiers. They could actually remain unconscious through a gun barrage. Like cats they would sleep through any sound except the one that was out of place, the sound that signified a threat. The clink of a Cossack’s stirrup would have them up, or the snort of a Russian horse. But the noise of the guns, or Wynter’s bawling, they were used to.
Crossman was beginning to tire of this badinage.
‘Wynter, go to bed.’
‘But she’s a trollop, sergeant.’
‘You knew that when you married her, man. Who else would have married you?’
‘Sergeant, that’s not fair.’
‘No, but unfortunately it’s true and you know it.’
Wynter shrugged: a gesture of helplessness. He looked down at his beloved. Her mouth was hanging open in a soft snore. She lay sprawled across the narrow cot. He heaved her to one side and then crawled on to the blanket next to her. Within a minute, he too was asleep, his arm draped around her broad shoulders. Soon the pair were snoring in harmony.
Attack on the Redan Page 12
