It was nothing much, in the way of exchanges, but it was significant. Crossman and Pirce-Smith had not begun their relationship with any great affection. In fact loathing and dislike were not far from the surface for quite a long time after their first meeting. A bridge had been crossed though and there was now a modicum of trust on both sides. Resentments, again on both sides for various reasons, had evaporated. They were not friends, nor could be, but they had reached an understanding with this little fracas in the hills, which in itself was nothing much in the way of military actions.
The lieutenant’s eyes then roamed over the camel again, lingering on the magnificent saddle and its brass swivel.
‘Exotic, to say the least. Beauty on the beast.’
The misquotation was an accident, but everyone present thought the lieutenant very clever. They all strolled back towards Balaclava, running the gauntlet of jeering Scotsmen again, but giving as good as they got. Back at the hovel, Betsy was relieved of her saddle and gun, and Stik was given a present of a silver coin by Lieutenant Pirce-Smith. The boy stared at this gift with wide disbelieving eyes, which were later turned on the lieutenant. Clearly Pirce-Smith had captured the heart of someone who would now die for him should the need arise in the future.
Later Crossman went to see the colonel, finding him in jubilant mood.
‘By God, sergeant, this is good news. Lieutenant Pirce-Smith tells me the zumbooruck saved his life. I’ve already reported to our new commander in chief – oh, don’t worry, he’s not like the old one. I think he’s quite in favour of our activities, to tell the truth. General Simpson wouldn’t have been my choice, but then he’s better than some. At least he listens to sense on occasion. I digress. I’m most pleased. Most pleased.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The colonel went to the window, looking out over the formless ground which stretched between him and front.
‘You know, sergeant, this war has already gone into legend back in Britain?’
‘Sir?’
‘The Light Brigade.’ Hawke sighed. ‘The loss of the Light Brigade was a sad and terrible thing to us here, to the army in general, but to the ordinary civilian in a Portsmouth street, or a square in Edinburgh, that awful charge was something glorious. Can you imagine it? We lost the best part of five regiments on that bloody field and they talk about it as if it were a victory . . .’
‘I have never really understood cavalry, sir. I too abhor the loss, but as to whether the tactics were sound or not, I have no real idea. Of course, I listen to talk and it seems to me to be madness to charge the mouths of cannons.’
‘Madness, absolute! Now the Heavies, they did precisely the right thing, scored a wonderful victory over the Russian cavalry, yet who remembers them? Are the Greys and the Royals spoken of in awe in the inns of Glasgow? No. Are the Inniskillings praised in small Irish villages? Not a jot. Nor do the heavy dragoons receive appreciation in the taverns of London. No one remembers how glorious, how successful our myopic General Scarlett was on that day. He led his men against superior forces and triumphed. Were we Romans we would be crowning his head with the laurel and parading him through streets of cheering citizens. Instead we quietly put him to one side with a pat on the back. I sometimes wonder if the British are the only nation who celebrate their defeats. We do seem to revel in it.’
‘Perhaps it’s because we have had so few of them?’
Calcutta Hawke swung round with an iron smile on his face.
‘Now, sergeant, you’re being partisan. No, I tell you what it is with this Light and Heavy thing. It’s the style. People are interested in getting the job done, that’s certain, but the style in which it’s done is more important than the effectiveness. Light cavalry? Lots of dash and élan. Sets your heart racing to see those beautiful light horses at full gallop, their riders high in the saddle, sabres flashing in the sun. The Heavy cavalry is more disciplined, has a more serious way of going about its business. A heavy, plodding force that smashes through the enemy ranks using its sheer weight. Draught horses! They don’t excite the popular imagination at all. The difference between the two is not just ingrained in the contempt they show for one another, but in their physical images. Who cares whether the Light Brigade failed, and failed miserably, and the Heavy Brigade prevailed, and with honour? No one but us. You were there, sergeant. How did you feel?’
‘Sick, on the one hand. Proud on the other.’
‘There you are then. Now with our new zumbooruck squadron – for I plan to have one if this war goes on much longer – we shall go for racing dromedaries. They have them, you know, in Arabia. They race them bareback. I want our camels to excite the public imagination. We shall have gold and scarlet trappings on our saddles. Slim hammered-bronze swivels that gleam in the sun. We shall have riders and gunners dressed like zouaves: flamboyant, dashing, full of colour and zest! Can you see it, sergeant? We’ll encourage a nickname and become as famous as Skinner’s Horse in the Indian army. Hawke’s Zumboorucks!’
Crossman stood there, nodding, wondering whether his colonel had been smoking too much of the local tobacco.
If Wynter had thought that being married would make his life less miserable he had soon been put right. He now spend much of his waking time prising Mary out of drinking huts and gambling tents. Not that she was ever unhappy to see him. She always greeted him with a cheery note, telling him to come on in and join the fun. Usually, by the time he found her, he was so dispirited the anger had fled him. Once or twice he got into a fight when he found her on the knee of soldier or sutler, but soon realized that this could be a never-ending cycle, for the trouble with Mary was not the lure of infidelity – she actually did not care much for the act of lovemaking – but once she had a couple of drinks in her she was such an amiable person she wanted to hug the world. Occasionally she would bed a man for money, when Wynter refused to give her any, but even he did not find that too offensive, once he she had explained the process to him. The men, she told him, were usually so drunk they paid their money without getting anything but a snooze on a different bed, or by the time they were sober they had forgotten what had happened and to whom. Since this was Wynter’s own experience of visiting whores he believed every word she said.
However, it did grieve Wynter that Mary was seldom around and seemed quite happy to be without him. He felt she ought to be there to cook his meals and do small chores for him. After all, wasn’t that what a wife was for? So he employed the son of a Chinese washerwoman, a fifty-year-old man everyone called Canton Joe, to root Mary out whenever he wanted her for something. Canton Joe charged a halfpenny a time, a farthing of which he gave to his sixty-five-year-old mother. Canton Joe’s mother’s laundry was just across the street, so Wynter simply had to yell, ‘Joe!’ at the top of his voice and the smiling toothless Lee Choeng Ho (Joe’s real name) would come trotting across to the hovel in his wooden clogs.
‘Joe!’ called Wynter one morning, ‘get over here you lazy Chink!’
Peterson took Wynter to task. ‘Joe isn’t lazy. It’s you who’s lazy. If you were a woman you’d be called a slut.’
‘Well I an’t a woman, am I?’ growled Wynter. ‘Ah, Joe,’ the Chinese man in question had appeared in the doorway, ‘fetch my Mary – udder one – for me, will you? She didn’t come home last night.’ Wynter tossed Joe a halfpenny, knowing Joe had to be paid first, not when he returned. Joe caught the coin deftly with his left hand and transferred it to his pocket in a trice.
‘I go look-see for udder one.’ Joe spoke China Coast pidgin and ‘udder one’ was anyone else who was not present. It could be quite confusing, as when Joe added, ‘Udder one say udder one gone Jonnie Bread housie.’ Which meant that someone had told Joe that Mary had gone to a bawdy house called Jonnie Bread’s. ‘Master wait here.’
Canton Joe always told Wynter to wait there, even though Wynter had no intention of going anywhere. However this day Joe came back with some shocking news, which had Wynter rocking back on his heels. Joe wa
s wringing his hands and his face had a tragic expression
‘Master Harry, udder one, she dead!’
Wynter sat there stunned for a moment. Predictably his first concern was with himself. ‘Was it a catching disease?’
Joe shook his head, dumbly.
‘Cholera then? The drink? Was it an accident?’
‘No, Master Harry, she killed by udder one. Missie Mary, she murdered.’
Wynter jumped off his cot and Peterson, the only other member of the peloton in the room at the time, let out a gasp.
‘Who did it?’
‘Not know, Master Harry. Missie Mary, she go with udder one backside-housie. Udder one he hit missie with bottle, many time. Nobody hear. Nobody look-see him go. He go back window. You go now, Master Harry, look-see Jonnie Bread.’
Wynter dressed himself. Peterson watched him, not out of any interest, but because he looked so grim she was afraid he was going to do something stupid when he went out.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, once he was ready.
‘Suit yourself.’
The pair of them went to Jonnie Bread’s hut. Jonnie was a lascar who had once cooked in the galleys of British naval vessels and was famous for the chapatis he cooked in a tandoori oven in front of his hut. Like most of the Crimean traders he also sold alcohol. He was at that moment washing the tin mugs he sold his arak in, the dirty water coming from a man-made pond just outside his back window. The pond had been dug some six months before as a deep square latrine, but had almost immediately filled with winter rain and was now a source of water for several sutlers’ huts.
‘Harry,’ said Jonnie, wiping his hands on the dirty seaman’s lammy he had worn for nearly seven years without washing it, ‘sorry about your loss. It was me what found her, early on this mornin’. I would’ve sent somebody over to you, but there wasn’t nobody with me till Canton Joe came.’ Jonnie’s English was near-perfect, having been on British sailing ships since he was a boy of twelve.
‘Where is she now, Jonnie?’ asked the dispirited Wynter. ‘Have they took her away?’
‘No,’ he nodded at a tiny back room. ‘In there. I didn’t come myself, see, because them what did it might’ve come back an’ stole the body.’
‘Them? I thought you said to Joe it was only one man.’
‘It was, it was. That’s just my way of speakin’. I didn’t see exactly who, ’cause I was too busy with serving customers. You know what it’s like in here, round about three in the morning – heaving – and the smoke so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face. I think I knew the door to the room had been opened, but I didn’t see Mary or anyone with her.’
Wynter sighed. ‘All right, Jonnie, it an’t your fault.’
Wynter stuck his head round the doorjamb to peer at the body. Mary was sprawled over the end of the bed, half-naked, with her head touching the floor and her feet on a greasy strawmat pillow. Wynter was glad he could not see her face, but he was aware of a pool of blood under the bed. Her right arm dangled over the edge of the bed. There was a clump of hair in her fingers, gripped by bloodied fingernails. Wynter guessed that Mary had torn it from her attacker’s scalp. It was dark curly hair, with a peppery-grey amongst it. However, there were thousands of men from whose head that hair could have been taken, all within six miles. The clue, if Wynter thought of it as such, was no significant clue at all.
Wynter pulled back, saying to Peterson, ‘You can have a look.’
‘No,’ she replied, emphatically. ‘I don’t need to.’
He shouted back, ‘I didn’t need to neither.’ Then to Jonnie Bread, he added, ‘You better report this. This an’t nothin’ to do with me, it’s to do with you. You better tell the army Mary’s been killed. I wasn’t here so it can’t be me. Where’s the bottle?’
‘What bottle?’
‘Canton Joe said it was done with a bottle.’
‘Oh, that?’ said Jonnie. ‘It’s on the other side of the bed. You can have if you want it, Harry.’
Harry didn’t want it. He simply wished to know where it was. Wynter left, with Peterson stumbling along after him.
‘Aren’t you staying, to see what happens?’
‘No I an’t. They’ll make too much of it, they always do. I’m after getting the bastard what did it to her.’
‘And how are you going to do that?’
‘By askin’ questions, same as how you find out anything. Somebody saw her go in that room and they’ll know who with. I’m goin’ to find out, see, and when I do he’d better watch out.’
Sergeant Crossman was waiting back at the hovel for them. Both Wynter and Peterson were supposed to be on a training exercise and the sergeant was angry with them for not showing. However, once the circumstances had been explained to him, his anger turned to sympathy.
‘Sorry to hear that, Wynter. You’ve not had a lot of luck lately. Poor Mary. She was a plucky woman, to fight with her attacker like that.’
‘Oh, she was good at fightin’, I can vouch for that. Sergeant, can I have some time off to ask a few coves some questions? I know who gets in Jonnie Bread’s place at that time of the morning. Them as has got nothin’ to hide won’t mind answering’ a question or two. Them as do mind better watch out, ’cos I’ll be wanting to the know the reason.’
By the time Crossman got to Jonnie Bread’s some soldiers had been for the body. They said they would bury her with the last week’s cholera victims. Since the murder had not been witnessed no one was too concerned about catching the killer. There was a lot of speculation over certain individuals who were known to have ugly tempers when they were drunk, but that was about as far as anyone got. There had been one or two murders in the past which had gone unpunished, where the killer had not been obvious. There was no one to go picking around, looking for things that would lead to the killer’s arrest and hanging. No one would have thought to do such a thing, except perhaps a relative or a close friend.
It was unfortunate for the killer that Wynter was the kind of man who knew who to ask and where to look for information. Before the morning was out Wynter had a good idea of who had killed his wife Mary. He went out, armed and dangerous, looking for the man. A search of the camp failed to unearth the person he was looking for, so when evening and darkness came around, Wynter went back to the hovel to see Crossman.
‘I know who done it,’ said Wynter, dramatically. ‘It was Charlie Dobson.’
‘Who is Charlie Dobson?’ asked Crossman.
‘Deck hand from the Conquerer, a frigate that went out last month. He should’ve been on it, but he was drunk as a pig and missed the tide. He’s a big ugly brute. Nasty streak in ’im. Heavy bastard with a fist as big as my head. He’s broken a few faces since he’s been here, some of them whores from the tents. Don’t matter to him who he hurts and who he don’t. Who’s goin’ to help me look for the bastard tomorrow?’
‘I’ll come,’ stated Gwilliams.
‘Me too,’ said Yorwarth.
Crossman shook his head. ‘I’m not having my men roaming the Crimea, bent on drawing blood. Do you want to hang yourselves? You are not vigilantes, you are soldiers.’
‘I might ’ave guessed you wouldn’t come,’ snarled Wynter.
‘You’re not listening. No one is going. I shall inform Major Lovelace of your suspicions, Wynter, and he will get someone to follow them up, but there will be no personal man hunt. You understand me?’
Wynter said, ‘I thought you was one for justice?’
‘I am.’
Crossman would not be moved. Even Peterson thought he was being unreasonable. When the sergeant had gone, Wynter said, ‘I’ll get Yusuf Ali on to him. The Turk will root him out. I know he’s the sergeant’s man, but he liked Mary. He’ll find the bastard and when Ali goes out after a man’s blood, that man had better be somewhere else.’
Ali was subsequently pulled aside when he came in that night. Given the story he went out again, straight away. Wynter was confident that before the
morning Charlie Dobson would have a knife in his back. However, when the Bashi-Bazouk returned with the dawn, Wynter was informed that Charlie Dobson was nowhere to be found. He had vanished from the camp.
‘Gone up into the hills,’ muttered Wynter. ‘Well he might. I’ll catch up with him, you see if I don’t. Killing my Mary like that. She wouldn’t do harm to a fly, Mary wouldn’t.’
Whether Wynter used the murder as an excuse to get drunk during the day or not, Crossman wasn’t certain. However, he let it ride, warning the others not to indulge along with the grieving soldier. Wynter grew increasingly morose and maudlin, talking on and on about how much he had loved his Mary, and how much she had loved him. At first the others let him ramble on, hoping he would burn himself out before long, but when that did not happen the resentment set in. Peterson was quite scathing about Wynter’s ‘marriage’ and how it seemed that all he cared about was getting Mary into bed. She said what Wynter wanted was a slave, not a wife, and there was good reason why Mary wandered most of the time.
‘That’s not fair,’ cried Wynter. ‘She took some of me pay, didn’t she? I never hit her, did I? Model husband, I was.’ His remarks gathered bitterness as they went. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, bein’ married, Peterson, so you can just shut your porthole, see. Married people, why they have a sort of secret life between ’em. You don’t know how much I loved my Mary. You can never know. Only she and me knew.’
Peterson saw the sense in this, but she did point out that if it was all so cosily secret, why couldn’t Wynter grieve in silence, and not drag the rest of the world into that pit of despair in which he loved to wallow.
‘Well, I like that. I like that, oh yes sir. Comrades in arms, we’re supposed to be. All together, helpin’ each other. I hope you never end up in the workhouse, like my mum and dad,’ he added, darkly. ‘In there you have to stand by one another or you go mad and end up in Bedlam.’
After three days, during which Ali scoured the French, British and Sardinian lines, and failed to find Charlie Dobson, Wynter announced he was going into the hills to look for the miscreant.
Attack on the Redan Page 16
