Before Sebastopol,
Crimean Peninsula
January 1855
1
The bundle of winter jackets that Madeleine carried was so large that she could barely keep hold of it. Her arms were stretched out in front of her, embracing her burden tightly, her interlocked fingers straining to contain the bulging roll of wool and leather. As she crossed the loose boundary between the French and British camps, stumbling on the rutted, frozen mud underfoot, one jacket began to slip from her grasp, beneath her left elbow. Cursing, she unclasped her hands and snatched at its sleeve; only for two, three, then four more to follow it on to the ground. With a small scream of rage, she threw down the rest.
The afternoon, like so many before it, had been spent making requests for supplies in the French camps. Madeleine was required to take centre stage during these expeditions, as Annabel’s broken French and somewhat brusque, impatient bargaining style had proved less than effective at securing the sympathetic cooperation of Great Britain’s Gallic allies. It was trying work, the French officers seeming to delight in a chance to deliver lengthy lectures on the shameful state of the British forces. How much more of their part of the line, she was asked repeatedly, would they cede to French control? How was it that the Turks–the Turks!–had managed to maintain a more effective fighting force? Did they realise that were it not for the deficiencies of Britain, Sebastopol would have fallen months ago, and they would all be at liberty to return home?
These officers also made it clear that they regarded her, a lady who had exchanged glorious France for miserable England, with some disdain. This could quickly be dismissed; a single pretty sob, or a plea made in the correct attitude of beautiful misery, had the prideful fools scrabbling on their knees, promising whatever they could in an effort to restore her spirits. But performing such expert manipulations quickly became wearying. At that moment, as she stood crossly beside the pile of discarded jackets in the winter twilight, Madeleine wanted only to return to her bed. She knew, however, that the tireless Annabel would have other plans for her, and that she would be on her feet until long after nightfall.
Madeleine hugged herself, clamping her aching hands in her armpits. Never before had she known such cold. It seemed to seep inside her, through her, chilling the marrow of her bones, frosting over her muscles and organs, making her groan and judder like an old railway carriage. She let out a shivering sigh as she stamped her feet against the iron earth.
At the head of the Worontzov road, quite close to where she had stopped, a heavy cart was being loaded with the sick and wounded. It was a French cart, with French drivers, but all the casualties were British, being taken down from the plateau to the port of Balaclava, some five miles distant–yet another demonstration, she realised, of the dependence about which she had heard so much that day. Civilian doctors and orderlies attended to the worst cases, lifting up stretchers and dressing injuries. One of these men had noticed her, and now stood staring. Cautiously, she returned his gaze. It was Richard’s junior, Mr Kitson.
The Russian winter had gnawed away at the correspondent, as it had at everyone on the campaign. His heavy coat was missing a lapel, and a long tear across the shoulder had been but crudely fixed with ragged, uneven stitches. The beard that snaked out through his upturned collar was bunched into knotted, uncombed clumps. He had none of the defeated exhaustion that dogged the fighting men, however. After addressing the cart’s driver in competent, efficient French, he came over to her, a thin smile on his face.
‘Why, Mrs Boyce,’ he said rather inscrutably, touching the bent brim of his cap. ‘Imagine meeting you like this, Madame.’
Madeleine was uncertain how to respond. They had not so much as exchanged a word since the day she had landed. The impression she had gleaned from Richard’s few remarks about his reporting team was that it no longer existed, properly speaking. His talk now was almost entirely of his own endeavours. Deciding nonetheless upon wary cordiality, she returned Mr Kitson’s greeting.
He pointed towards the jackets. ‘These are yours, I assume?’
Madeleine nodded. The wool, against the dark, frozen ground, was the colour of sour cream. ‘Mouton jackets, they are called–sheepskin, you see, with the wool left on?’
‘Yes, I have seen the French wearing them. They will be most welcome among our own troops. We remain chronically ill-equipped on that front since the sinking of the Prince last November.’ His voice grew strained. ‘Forty thousand winter uniforms and boots, everything that is now needed the most, lost to the waters of Balaclava harbour.’ Someone over in the cart moaned loudly, and called out an unintelligible word. Mr Kitson turned towards her. ‘I must say that it warms my heart, Madame, to see you engaged so selflessly, and in such difficult conditions.’
Madeleine nodded again, hardly hearing this. She wanted desperately to ask him about Richard–if he happened to know where he was, despite the rift that had occurred between them. But this, she knew, would be far too brazen. ‘You–you are helping with the injured, Mr Kitson?’
‘I do what I can, Mrs Boyce, with the little knowledge I have managed to glean in the past few months,’ he replied, rubbing his hands together. Madeleine noticed that his gloves, once grey, were almost entirely covered with bloodstains, their hues ranging from molasses to bleached orange. ‘It was not my original role here, of course, but I find—’
He was interrupted by the arrival of Annabel, bearing a consignment of Mouton jackets almost twice as large as that which had overwhelmed Madeleine. After setting down this mighty load, and shooting a reproving look at her friend for delaying their mission of mercy, she proceeded to engage Mr Kitson in cheerful conversation. Madeleine had soon learned that Annabel saw people in a very simple manner, as worthy either of absolute approval or utter condemnation. It was as if the world appeared to her as it would on the Day of Judgement, when mankind would be divided neatly into the blessed and the damned. Mr Kitson, it seemed, had managed to win himself a place in the exalted ranks of the former.
Annabel declared that she had not spoken with him since before Christmas; had he managed to mark it in any way? He admitted that he had not. Annabel was forgiving, conceding that their current situation did not lend itself to pious celebration. She said that she had seen him on the docks, working as a medical orderly–binding wounds and administering medicines, filling in the endless forms, consoling the living and carrying the bodies of the dead. As she recounted this honourable list of duties, Annabel’s face positively shone with admiration, whilst Mr Kitson murmured modest deflections of her praise.
Madeleine began to grow impatient. She wondered how she might intervene, and direct the conversation towards the Courier and its brave senior correspondent. Then, quite unexpectedly, Annabel did this for her.
‘And what of your colleagues, sir?’ she inquired, looking around. ‘What of Mr Cracknell? He is not here with you, I take it?’ Her tone now had a hard, critical note to it, indicating that the discussion had moved to one of the damned.
Mr Kitson shook his head. ‘Mr Cracknell and I have not worked together for a number of weeks. I believe he is fully occupied with the composition of his Courier reports.’
Annabel pulled a grim, knowing face, and made an acid remark about Mr Cracknell’s mounting fame.
It upset Madeleine to hear her lover talked about in this caustic manner. She wanted to leap to his defence, to say that they did not understand the nobility, the necessity of his labour–the labour that was increasingly keeping them apart. As her trials increased, so did her need for Richard. He was her consolation, her sole comfort in that hopeless, frozen land. She would finish a long, difficult day with Annabel and then wait at her window for his signal. More and more, though, it did not come. The explanation given was always the same: his latest report, the one that was going to finally bring justice to the British Army and demolish its unworthy commanders, her husband included. They had not managed to meet for over a week. An acute anxiety was building u
p inside her. She felt as if there was something urgent she had to say or do, or somewhere else she had to be; but she was petrified, unable to act.
‘How about Mr Styles, your young illustrator?’ Annabel asked next. ‘Has he managed to bring that temper of his under control?’
Mr Kitson’s expression darkened. ‘I cannot say, madam, much to my chagrin. My own feeling was that he was becoming increasingly troubled, and should be recalled to England. I was overruled, however–quite comprehensively. The Courier’s editor simply did not believe that any man could suffer in war without having been struck by a bullet or run through with a bayonet.’
‘Did this cause your break with Mr Cracknell, sir?’
‘Not entirely. But it is true that my editor was not heeding me, my senior was not heeding me and Mr Styles himself certainly was not heeding me. I did start to wonder why I should supply the Courier with my views on the war when my views on the wellbeing of my colleagues were being so roundly ignored.’ He paused. ‘Do forgive me. I am sounding rather querulous.’
Annabel shrugged. ‘Your position sounds perfectly just, Mr Kitson, in my opinion. And you have taken on good work indeed.’
There was a piercing whistle from the cartload of casualties.
‘Speaking of which, I must be off,’ he said apologetically, lifting his cap and exposing a nest of flattened, overgrown hair. ‘Most pleasant to see you both. I hope we will meet again soon.’
Madeleine’s eyes followed him as he swung himself up on to the cart, which had already started to trundle down the Worontzov road to Balaclava. Her despondency seemed to drench her, leaving her heart heavy and cold. She wanted to sit down; she wanted to be with Richard; she wanted to be warm.
‘Come, my pet,’ said Annabel with stout vigour, gathering up her Mouton jackets. ‘We have to take these to the emplacements on Chapman’s Hill. There are at least two more loads to be carried before tea.’
Madeleine stared down balefully at the formless woolly pile beside her, filled with a sudden hatred for Annabel and her endless, arduous tasks.
‘“Almighty God is able to make all grace abound to you,”’ her companion intoned, heaving her load up into the air, ‘“so that you will abound in every good work.”’
2
Kitson left the Middle Ravine, the rocky, cannon-ball strewn corridor that formed the main route between the plateau and the siege-works, and paused beneath a lantern to give a quick account of his errand to an exhausted-looking watch captain. He had said no more than five words before he was waved on indifferently into the trenches of the first parallel.
It was almost ten o’clock. A bright moon hung overhead, framed by the two sides of the trench, casting a silver light over the icy, waterlogged path before him. Things seemed quiet that night, for the most part. There was the occasional patter of rifle fire from the French lines, off to the right, but the artillery pieces of both sides stood unfired. Kitson had never been this far forward–this close to Sebastopol, the object of the siege. The prevailing mood in the network of deep, fetid ditches that formed the mainstay of the British assault, however, was one of desolate apathy rather than resilience and determination. Those posted there were gaunt and bearded, their once-fine uniforms now little more than rags that, in many cases, failed even to cover their flesh sufficiently, let alone protect it from the cold. Kitson could feel icicles gathering in his own beard, yet he saw privates with nothing at all on their feet. The bitter temperature seemed to compel constant activity–these soldiers, however, were almost motionless apart from their shivering. Hunched or even prone in water several inches deep, most paid him no attention as he passed; but some looked up, following his progress with empty eyes, making him feel profoundly guilty for his own thick goatskin coat and seaman’s boots.
Kitson focused upon his errand. It was a typically Crimean scenario, the kind that occurred dozens of times a week in Balaclava alone. He had been toiling on the docks as usual. The last of the previous night’s sick had just been dispatched, either to the General Hospital just outside town or for transit to Scutari, when a clerk from the harbourmaster’s office had appeared. Somewhat embarrassed, this man had announced that an officer from the Royal Engineers, a Major Nicholson, was required at the harbour early the next morning to assist with a civilian-led project of high importance. Nicholson was believed to be in the Forward Attack, overseeing the construction of the advance parallel, and no one could be found to go and fetch him. All the soldiers in Balaclava had just come down from the plateau, and flatly refused to trek back up to it again; and everybody else seemed suddenly to have pressing duties that prevented them from venturing from the town. They were his last hope.
Doctor Godwin, the surgeon supervising the docks, had turned wearily to Kitson and asked if he would consider undertaking this mission as a personal favour to him–it was very much in their interests to stay on the right side of the harbourmaster. Kitson had inquired about the nature of the project, but the clerk knew only that it was intended to relieve the trials of the fighting men. Resigning himself to another sleepless night, he had agreed.
After a few minutes the trench Kitson was following led him to a rifle pit. It was covered with what looked like horse skins and reinforced with sandbags and wooden pickets. Those who manned it were laid out, insensible, their guns by their sides; he had to repeat his greeting several times before eliciting a response. Groggily, the soldiers informed him that he was now in the third parallel, and that the officer he sought was somewhere up ahead. He moved back out into the trench, stepping around a large puddle and rounding a corner. Up in front of him now was one of the forward batteries, built into a large bank of stone and bolstered with deep earthworks, standing about ten feet above the parallel. A narrow rope ladder had been thrown down its side, leading to a ledge that had been carved into the main rampart. Kitson climbed the ladder and pulled himself on to it; and a second later was looking out over the siege of Sebastopol.
There was a white frost that night, setting a crisp shell over much of the landscape. The system of trenches looked like an ugly act of defacement, a series of jagged cuts into a long slope of smooth silver. Kitson could see the string of squat forts that asserted the Allied line, between which these trenches ran, and how they were matched, echoed almost, by the Russian positions around the outer suburbs of their city. Opposite the battery on which he stood, across three or four hundred yards of unclaimed ground, lay an expansive enemy fort, a crenulated block of reinforced earth that bristled with artillery. The night was so clear that one could even see the sentries who were patrolling along its crude ramparts. To its rear, in amongst acres of ruined buildings, the orange flickering points of hundreds of torches revealed vast teams of labourers enlarging and improving what was already there, and commencing new structures. As he surveyed all of this, Kitson thought that there could be no possibility of the British Army prevailing in a frontal assault on such a position–not in its current condition. Small wonder that they had arrived at such a dreadful stalemate.
Past the Russian defences lay the city itself. Its main streets were barricaded and filled with debris, but otherwise it seemed oddly normal. Few of its structures appeared in any way dilapidated or damaged. Their moonlit roofs formed an undulating mosaic of silver, pale blue and white, broken only by the bulbous minarets of Orthodox churches. Lights shone at windows and moved in the lanes below them; in greater numbers, perhaps, than one might expect to see in peacetime, but hardly enough to suggest a population in some terrible state of agitation or upheaval. The waters of the port itself were perfectly still, reflecting the disc of the moon, the very essence of tranquillity.
Kitson stepped down into the battery. It was long, holding in excess of twenty cannon. Much of it was swathed in darkness, but men could be seen shuffling in between the guns. He noticed a few of them, officers swaddled in the thick winter clothes denied to their men, exchanging a dour joke; and not for the first time since coming up to the plateau, he became worri
ed that Cracknell might be among them, shaking hands, passing out cigarettes and gathering testimonies.
They had not spoken since well before Christmas. Kitson knew exactly how a reunion would go. There would be accusations and counter-accusations of increasing acrimony, culminating in him being harshly denounced as a deserter. He frequently saw people reading the Courier in Balaclava, and witnessed the savage arguments Cracknell’s pieces provoked amongst both soldiers and civilians. They were now universally regarded as the work of one person only: the Courier’s man in the camps before Sebastopol. Kitson had come to believe that he had been quietly removed from the magazine’s roster. He did not care enough even to confirm this. His experiences in Balaclava that winter had shown him that he could no longer react to the misery of others merely with the composition of a righteous paragraph.
The Courier reports themselves were difficult for him to read. It was disconcerting to see justifiable outrage at the misconduct of the war being mixed with Cracknell’s biting vindictiveness towards those individuals he believed needed punishing–who often happened to be those who had also slighted or dismissed him. Boyce, of course, featured as regularly as Cracknell could work him in. To Kitson, this particular battle had been well and truly lost in the hut of Major-General Codrington. Cracknell fought on regardless, though, succeeding only in polarising opinion and winning the villain as many new supporters as detractors.
As he walked through along the battery, Kitson discovered to his considerable relief that the correspondent was not there after all. It was unsurprising, really; the front was huge, and filled with many thousands of men. The chances of them encountering one another were slight. He approached the artillery officers and inquired after Major Nicholson.
The Street Philosopher Page 27
