The Street Philosopher

by Matthew Plampin

  ‘Yes, our Thomas is a regular Messiah!’ Despite the speed at which they were moving, Cracknell seemed able to maintain an almost uninterrupted stream of words. ‘I’ll wager he’s out amongst the many lepers of the Cottonopolis whenever he gets the chance, assuaging all manner of misery. Why, I wouldn’t even be much surprised if his very touch healed!’

  Jemima lifted her hand to protect her face and bonnet as they went under a tree, passing through a screen of twigs. ‘Mr Cracknell, I—’

  ‘It is the ideal place for such activity, I suppose,’ her abductor went on. ‘After all, the one thing this city has in abundance is its slums. Such filth, such abject despair! I thought I’d seen the worst this world had to offer out in the Crimea, Mrs James, but oh no! This city of yours has been a real bloody education.’

  ‘What is your purpose?’ Jemima managed to say. She tried again to shake herself free; he drew her closer to him and quickened his pace yet further. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  Cracknell behaved as if she had not spoken, pressing on towards the outer boundary of the Belle Vue. Soon they were amongst the animal cages, which now stood still and empty, the beasts having been locked away for the night. He paused by one, looking back towards the lake. Jemima peered over his thick shoulder. Mr Kitson could just be seen, a tiny figure on the gas-lit path, making after them. She did not have the breath to call out to him. Cracknell set off again. It was clear that some manner of snare was being set.

  ‘Mr Cracknell, if you will not tell me why—’

  ‘And I must say that your pleasure garden is not very impressive either, Mrs James,’ Cracknell continued, in the same disapproving tone. ‘Now I am no frequenter of the Crermorne, but at least there one can expect to see such things as French actresses dressed as the maiden Europa, making daring balloon ascents on the back of white oxen. Yet what wonders does this miserable place have to offer?’ He gestured contemptuously at the cages. ‘Parrots, monkeys and rowing boats!’

  They reached the maze. Jemima, recovering a little from her forced dash across the gardens, realised that they were going to enter. She wracked her memory. All that was inside was a hermit’s cave. Why on earth would he want to take her there? Cracknell stopped talking for a moment, a pensive finger raised, clearly trying to recall the path through.

  She decided to try a different tack. ‘My father is in league with Boyce, isn’t he? He smuggled that panel back to England in exchange for contracts with the army.’

  He looked at her, his face in shadow. ‘So you have worked out that much, have you? I’m impressed, Mrs James, truly I am.’ There was amusement in his voice. ‘It is a strange pairing, your father and Boyce–like watching a dog trying to play with a cat. But then, avarice glues together many uneasy alliances, don’t it?’

  Jemima didn’t know what to say. She felt bitterly, savagely ashamed.

  Cracknell started into the maze, pulling her to his side. ‘I met your husband, you know, on the quay at Balaclava. He struck me as a decent, trustworthy sort, so I told him a few things about Boyce–who was nosing around in search of a greedy fool to exploit. Unfortunately, whilst we were talking, he found your father.’ Although retaining its energy, his voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. They turned left, paced down an avenue, and then turned right. ‘A few days later, I discovered that he had fallen victim to cholera on his very first night, whilst your father was making himself comfortable in Boyce’s rather well-appointed farmhouse. One might argue, Mrs James, that Charles Norton abandoned your Anthony to the plagues of Balaclava, and that this neglect contributed to his death.’

  This was one revelation too many for Jemima. In her blacker moments, she had wondered why it had been the younger, healthier man who had succumbed, if both were residing in the same place, whilst her father escaped completely. Even in the most violent throes of her grief, however, she had always been able to reason with herself, to state firmly that her suspicions were absurd and irrational, that there was a random element to contagion that could not be predicted or prevented. Now Richard Cracknell, who had been there and had spoken with Anthony mere days before he had died, was suggesting otherwise. She tried to draw in a breath; her body juddered painfully, and hot tears blurred her sight.

  They emerged before the cave. Cracknell, all his hurry gone, released her arm. ‘Your father richly deserves his punishment,’ he whispered, before moving away towards the cave mouth.

  Gasping, Jemima wiped her burning eyes on a corner of her shawl. Ahead, in the darkness, she could just discern the semi-clad bodies, and their rhythmic, urgent movements; she could hear groans, and the tight slaps of connecting flesh. Cracknell was now leaning against the entrance to the cave, his hands in his pockets, waiting patiently. On the stones between them lay her brother’s blue hat.

  Jemima knew at once that Bill was in the cave. Was it to be blackmail? Was Cracknell going to hold this over her brother, over her, and thus direct them in any manner he pleased?

  Somewhere behind her, Mr Kitson’s boots thudded on the dirt floor of the maze. He did not share Cracknell’s familiarity with the layout, however, and changed course several times, his feet skidding in the dust. He emerged, breathless, coming to an abrupt halt. His gaze went first to Jemima, his relief at finding her safe immediately fading at the sight of the anguish on her face. Then he looked at Cracknell, his brow creasing with fury.

  Several of those inside the cave had heard the street philosopher’s approach. There was a low hiss of warning, and seconds later three young working men ran out, refastening their clothing. They were plainly accustomed to such rapid flight, and kept their heads down to avoid recognition as they slipped around the back of the cave.

  With a start, Jemima realised that a group of her father’s hired men, the black-suits from Saloon F, had emerged silently from the maze. At their head was the square-faced giant who had dragged Mr Kitson out of the Exhibition–Mr Twelves. His features were impassive, and his heavy hands crossed in front of him.

  ‘Hold them,’ he ordered.

  But before his men could act, there was a series of popping sounds from the direction of the lake, followed by a drawn-out whistle, decreasing steadily in pitch as if something was soaring up into the sky and then beginning a slow descent. Jemima looked towards this noise; there was a flash up in the night sky. The evening’s fireworks display had begun early, in an effort to restore something of a festive atmosphere after the incident on the dancing boards. A blue rocket burst above the elm trees that fringed the maze, filling the small courtyard before the cave with coloured light. As the cloud of bright blue embers drifted to earth, this light moved with them, causing the shadows to shift and lengthen. For a moment, a long blue finger extended into the depths of the hermit’s cave, pointing out those who remained within.

  Bill was pressed into one of the deepest corners, up close against another man. Both were naked below the waist, their trousers around their ankles. They had been too involved in their coupling to pay attention to their fleeing fellows. The blue light made them pause, however, and they glanced around in furtive alarm. Bill’s eyes went straight to those of Mr Twelves, locking in recognition.

  The group that Cracknell had assembled around the artificial cave exploded like a shell, flinging its parts throughout the Belle Vue Gardens. Disengaging himself and frantically pulling up his trousers, Bill Norton shot from the cave. Knocking Twelves aside, he crashed off into the maze, forcing his way through the bushes. His friend Keane was close behind. More men ran out from the shadows; Norton’s black-suits gave chase, forgetting their mission, throwing punches and shouting obscenities as they did so. Kitson looked around quickly for Cracknell, but he was gone, his work complete.

  Mrs James had immediately started after Bill Norton and Keane, calling out her brother’s name, but had no hope of matching their speed in her crinoline. Kitson caught up with her in a small grove close to the greenhouses. Suddenly seeing the futility of her pursuit, she came to a halt.
r />   ‘We are ruined,’ she said flatly. ‘Those men will tell everyone, the entire city. You heard their curses, didn’t you, Mr Kitson–their disgust? It will be a terrible scandal.’ She sunk to the ground, the crinoline’s whalebone hoops jutting up awkwardly beneath the velvet of her dress.

  ‘All is not lost, Mrs James. I will help you however I can.’

  There was a loud crackle from the direction of the lake, followed by a rasping fizz; through a screen of branches, Kitson saw the luminescent reds and golds of the fireworks display glittering across the glass roofs of the greenhouses.

  Mrs James gave no sign of having heard him. She held her face in her hands. ‘Oh, poor Bill! All because of my father and his wicked secrets!’ A sob shook her shoulders. ‘And my husband–dear God, my husband. The old wretch did not tell me any of it, damn him.’ She lowered her hands; tears were shining on her palms. ‘What is your connection with all this?’ she asked, without turning towards him. ‘Did you meet Anthony out there as well?’

  Kitson hesitated. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It appears that Richard Cracknell met my husband in Balaclava and told him all about that accursed Pilate. Were you not there too, Mr Kitson? And are you his accomplice still, in fact? Was not all of this, including our friendship, just a part of your plan to strike my father down?’

  He went to her side, kneeling as quickly as his sore ribs would allow, and took her damp hands in his. ‘It was not, I swear it,’ he said firmly. ‘I did not meet your husband or your father in the Crimea. I am your friend. I knew nothing of Cracknell’s intentions this evening, and would have done anything to halt him. We parted on the very worst terms. Some–some truly dreadful things were done. It was my avowed intention never to see him again.’

  At this, her eyes finally looked back into his; he knew immediately that she believed him. ‘But why? What happened?’

  Kitson released her hands. The night seemed to grow darker, and the sounds of the fireworks more sharp and violent; but already, before even uttering a word, he tasted an overwhelming relief, as if a pent-up confession was finally beginning. Sitting down beside her, he took off his hat and dropped it into the grass.

  ‘I will tell you.’

  Before Sebastopol,

  Crimean Peninsula

  June 1855

  1

  Looping his arm under the Russian’s knees, Cregg braced himself and tugged hard. Nothing happened–the man remained firmly lodged beneath the gun carriage. He tugged again, groaning with the effort, his boots skidding in the dirt. The Russian’s heavily patched trousers started to come down, exposing the sharp fins of his hips and a dark line of pubic hair, but still he did not move. Cregg cursed wearily, and let the lifeless legs drop back down to the ground.

  To his left, over in the main body of the captured fort, the rest of the working party was busy reversing the parapet, toiling without pause in the early morning light. Gabions and fascines were being piled up to reinforce the new offensive wall, and fresh embrasures knocked through, so that the enemy’s cannon could be turned about and brought to bear upon their own city. This working party was about a hundred strong, assembled from the reserve regiments. It had come down through the trenches of the Right Attack with a team of stretcher-bearers, shortly before dawn. The fruits of this latest British victory had been laid out before its reluctant members: an all but demolished position, strewn with loose rocks, torn sandbags and the broken bodies of dead and wounded men. Huddled in amongst the wreckage were the exhausted survivors of the original storming force, their attention fixed on the open ground before their hard-won prize in readiness for a Russian counter-assault.

  Throughout the march to this fort, christened ‘the Quarries’ as it had been built within the pits of a long-abandoned open-seam mine, Cregg had griped and sworn without restraint. He had thus been selected by the sergeant in charge of his detail to remove Russian corpses from an auxiliary battery. This particular emplacement had plainly seen some savage combat, with fewer than a dozen able-bodied redcoats remaining inside. Some of them watched vacantly as their felled comrades were borne away, and Private Cregg began the grim business of clearing out the Russians.

  Army procedure was simply to tip the corpses out on to the field of battle, for the enemy to collect under cover of the next truce declared for this purpose. Moving them was hard, nasty work. Although very thin, the dead men were still heavy, like bundles of lead piping wrapped up in sackcloth. They had to be dragged up high banks of earth and stone and then rolled over–which involved a dangerous moment of exposure to the ever-vigilant enemy snipers. Some were still alive, having escaped the bayoneting normally dispensed to Russian wounded left behind after their army had withdrawn. They clawed at Cregg’s arms, begging and pleading in their garbled-sounding language. He did not respond, and tried his best not to look in their eyes as he heaved them down after the rest. Experience had taught him that this was the easiest way.

  The Ruski under the gun carriage was one of the last. Gingerly rubbing his mutilated hand, Cregg wondered how the cove had got himself into this mortal scrape. It looked as if he’d been lying injured on the ground, and someone had deliberately run the cannon, a nine-pound naval gun, over the top of him. Cregg looked around. A private from the 88th was nearby, his rifle in his hands, crouched in a dark corner. He was peering out carefully through the remains of a wooden rifle screen in the direction of Sebastopol.

  ‘’Ere, cock,’ Cregg grunted, ‘lend us an ’and, would’ja? This poxy bugger won’t budge.’

  Without a word, the soldier stood his rifle against the wall of the battery and came over to help. Taking hold of the gun carriage in a manner that suggested he’d moved it before, he waited for Cregg to adopt a similar pose on its opposite side; and then, on the count of three, they lugged the cannon backwards. There was a crunching sound from beneath it, and the Russian’s legs twisted to the side.

  ‘Much obliged.’ Cregg caught an accidental glimpse of the dead man’s face. It was contorted with terror, the open mouth exposing a mess of scurvy-blackened gums. ‘Tough fight, was it?’

  The private looked at the floor, scratching his chin. ‘Aye, worst we’ve ’ad for many a month,’ he answered. Cregg saw that this was a fellow veteran, with the numbness that marked their type–the sort who could talk of slaughter as a farmer might discuss the rains. ‘We took it easy enough, but the bastards kept at us all night, tryin’ to win it back.’

  Cregg went around the cannon and looked out through the splintered screen next to which his companion had been hunched. Before it lay scores of slain Russians, ten times the number he had removed from the battery. ‘Blimey,’ he said softly. ‘So I see, pal. So I see.’

  The other soldier moved to his side. ‘This is just the start of it. Word is that the brass wants us to press at the Redan next.’ He looked away, a bleak resentment creeping into his voice. ‘This is just the bleedin’ start of it.’

  Cregg squinted over the bodies towards this formidable fortress. The Redan was the last line of defence before Sebastopol itself. That early in the day, and at a couple of hundred yards’ distance, it appeared as little more than a blue block on the horizon, but its proportions were obvious. Cregg whistled through his teeth. ‘That’s a bleedin’ whopper, ain’t it, an’ no mistake! I wouldn’t want to be first out in front o’ that bugger!’ He leant back, pulled out a charred clay pipe, and then nodded towards a hole in the side of the battery. ‘Fancy a smoke?’

  His companion had edged back to his corner. He shook his head. ‘I daren’t,’ he mumbled uncomfortably. ‘Sarge’ll have me knackers.’ Picking up his minié, he gestured at the Russian with its stock. ‘What about ’im?’

  Cregg let out a dark laugh. ‘Chum, that cunt ain’t going nowhere.’ After quickly checking for his own NCO, who was off in another part of the Quarries, he nodded a curt, faintly scornful farewell to his more obedient comrade, and then slipped out.

  To the side of the fort was a long, sc
arred slope running down to the Middle Ravine, traversed by a single advance trench. Finding a narrow stone ledge that was well sheltered from the enemy line, Cregg made himself as comfortable as possible. He had tried to shield his hand that morning, but some jarring had been unavoidable. As a result, it now felt as if it had been dipped in hot tar. Wincing, he examined it. His remaining fingers, pink as sugar mice, stuck out uselessly from the stained, grubby wad of bandages. He could barely move them at all.

  The arrival of a sweltering summer, when there was no longer any excuse for gloves or mittens, had made it harder to conceal his disability from officers. He was managing, though, just about, tugging his sleeve down and so forth–and with the present shortages of experienced troops, nobody was looking too closely. He was a touch concerned that no real healing seemed to be going on beneath his clumsy bindings, but he was at least getting good at gulping down the pain.

  As he put a match in the pipe’s bowl, Cregg heard screams echoing off the sides of the Middle Ravine. Sucking coarse smoke down into his lungs, he saw that this wide gully, the main artery of the Allied siege, was crowded with wounded from both the French and British armies. The Frogs had been engaged in a parallel action further along the line, and had also succeeded, taking the fort of the Mamelon Vert; and from the look of things, it had been a costly victory indeed. Hospital tents had been set up in the ravine, to which the injured were being carried in their dozens. Through an open flap, in flickering candlelight, Cregg caught sight of a man in his shirt sleeves vigorously working a hand-saw as if breaking up logs. Then he stepped back, his arms red, and an orderly lifted an entire leg from the table before him, taking it outside and adding it carelessly to a large, pale pile of amputated limbs.