The Scarlet Thief (8 page)

The dress uniform he had been ordered to wear showed the damage a day’s slog through sand and mud had inflicted. His greatcoat was splattered with filth and soaked by the incessant rain, and underneath, the gold of his shoulder epaulets was already tarnishing.

The Light Company’s new leader stood alone in the rain on a small island of grass in the sea of mud, enduring the discomfort as he watched his company fall out and prepare themselves for the night ahead. It would be spent in the open, with only the salted pork and hard biscuits in their improvised backpacks for nourishment, and brackish water in their canteen to drink. There was little prospect of a fire for warmth.

A thin smile flittered across the captain’s face as he heard the first grumblings emerge from the grubby forms of his men, surprised that it had taken so long for the complaining to begin. As sure as dogs greet each other by sniffing arses, soldiers always follow a day’s work with a bout of whingeing; the soldiers’ right to grouse and grumble was inalienable.

‘There you are! By God, what a damned awful day. How are your boys getting on?’

The commander of the Light Company chose to turn his whole body to face the newcomer rather than turn at the neck and thus risk a waterfall of icy cold rainwater running down the back of his shirt. The diminutive figure of Captain Michael McCulloch strode towards him. McCulloch commanded the battalion’s 2nd Company and he had appointed himself the new captain’s friendly guardian.

It was an honour the Light Company’s captain would have happily forgone. McCulloch was well known for his prissiness, especially with regard to standards of dress. Such pickiness irked the newly arrived captain, although it was the martinet‘s orderly who bore the brunt of his obsessive demands for perfection. Even now, after hours of slogging through rain and sand, McCulloch seemed to gleam, as if he had been buffed from head to toe.

If McCulloch noticed the lack of an enthusiastic greeting from his fellow captain, he did not remark on it.

‘I have got someone I would like you to meet. I know you have some absurd notion that you can manage without an orderly but by the look of that greatcoat, it is obvious to us all that you are deluding yourself. More importantly, the colonel agrees and so, as of this minute, he insists that you utilise the services of one of the men.’ McCulloch raised a hand immaculately clad in a tan kidskin glove to wave away the protest that he knew was about to emerge from the small gap between greatcoat and shako in front of him. ‘None of that. The colonel insists and that is that. So allow me introduce the man we, your fellow officers, have selected for you. He has been nagging us for this opportunity for ages now, more fool him.’ McCulloch turned to a figure wearily trudging towards them. ‘Keep up, Smith, for goodness sake. Now then, Fusilier Thomas Smith, meet your new lord and master,’ McCulloch gestured theatrically at his fellow captain, ‘Captain Arthur Sloames.’

The rain stopped shortly before dawn. It was small relief to the thousands of British soldiers who had spent the night trying to rest in the stinking quagmire that had formed around them. They were bereft of any comfort other than a single blanket each. Even the generals had to endure the pitiless storm without cover. The general commanding the Light Division, Sir George Brown, was forced to sleep with only an overturned cart for protection from the elements.

Jack had given up trying to sleep long before the rain stopped, preferring instead to endure the misery of the night awake, waiting for the day to break, shivering through the cold and lonely hours. He looked in envy at the tumbled heaps of bodies spread around the muddy bog that had been assigned as the Light Company’s bivouac area. The fusiliers huddled together in small groups to keep warm, any desire for privacy overwhelmed by the bitter cold and the pervading damp.

Jack well remembered what it was to sleep jumbled up with his messmates. He had never thought he would miss it but, as he sat, cold, wet, and alone, he was jealous of the small comfort the men obtained from their closeness.

It had taken all of his courage to take Sloames’s uniform jacket from its peg and place it on his own shoulders. It felt as if it had doubled in weight, the responsibility and power it gave its wearer physically manifest in the bullion epaulets and gold buttons. The innkeeper had been all too willing to help dispose of Sloames’s body. He had quietly palmed the guineas and summoned a local undertaker content to take away the corpse of a dead orderly, the name of Jack Lark now buried along with the body of the officer he had served.

Once he had taken those first, terrifying steps, everything had fallen into place. He had been accepted and brought into the fold of the regiment without so much as a murmur or raised eyebrow. There had been plenty of time to practise his deception, first at the fusiliers’ depot in Woolwich, then later on board the steamship during the long, tedious voyage to the East. By the time he had finally joined his new battalion he had become so accustomed to his new role that he occasionally forgot he was not truly the person he claimed to be.

Yet the long journey to meet up with the battalion at its camp at Varna had done little to dull the pain of his loss. The circumstances of his departure festered in his soul, a canker he could not resist picking over, keeping the scab fresh and the wound painful. But he refused to give in to grief and bitterness. He vowed he would succeed in his deception to prove that Molly had not been wrong to choose him. He would show her just what he could achieve.

The King’s Royal Fusiliers had never been a fashionable regiment. Very few members of the aristocracy would willingly choose to spend even a short part of their military career in such parsimonious company. Instead, the regiment was officered by the epaulet gentry, the sons of tradesmen, of clergymen or of small-town gentlemen, for whom their commission was their only evidence of respectability. In such company, Jack thrived, revelling in the deceit, the motley collection of fusilier officers never once suspecting that there was a charlatan among them. Jack grew in confidence with every week that passed. Now, months later, much to his surprise, his deception was still intact and he found himself facing the prospect of leading Sloames’s company to war. The trial of battle awaited him. Jack feared it would be a damn sight harder to fool the gods of war than it had been to pull the wool over the eyes of his brother officers.

‘Coffee, sir?’

Jack looked up to see his newly acquired orderly standing in front of him, holding out a chipped tin mug brimming with steaming coffee. Gratefully Jack took hold of the mug, luxuriating in its warmth.

‘Thank you.’ Jack was sensitive to the nervousness of his new orderly and he was determined to make the man’s life as pleasant as possible. He sipped the scalding liquid, grimacing as the bitter coffee scoured the night sourness from his mouth. ‘Good coffee.’

‘Have you got something you’d like me to knock up for your breakfast, sir?’ Smith kept his voice low lest he disturb any of the other men in the company who were still desperately trying to cling to the last moments of rest they would have that day.

Jack smiled at the suggestion. ‘Only the same rancid salt pork and hard biscuit as you have, Tommy. You don’t have to worry about preparing anything for me. I plan to eat the same as you men, and, as you well know, even the finest chef at the Savoy could not make that foul offal taste any better. Unless you happen to have some juicy kidneys or some chops tucked away.’

‘No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t have anything like that, more’s the pity.’

The silence stretched uncomfortably between the two men, both feeling ill at ease with the stilted conversation. Smith swallowed and broke the uneasy silence.

‘Is there anything else I can do for you instead, sir?’

‘No, this coffee will have to suffice. Where did you get the beans from?’

‘Captain McCulloch’s orderly ground some up this morning, sir. He’s the only one who has a roundshot and shell case with him. I hear the officers usually club together to buy enough beans to go around so I expect they’ll tap you up for some rhino soon enough, sir.’

‘I am sure they will, most of them don’t have a silver sixpence between them.’ Jack smiled, hoping to break the awkwardness between the two of them. One very tangible benefit of impersonating Captain Arthur Sloames was the acquisition of his pocket book.

The annual pay for an infantry captain was one hundred and six pounds a year. It sounded like a fortune to Jack but it was far short of the amount even an unmarried officer was required to pay for a year’s worth of mess bills, uniforms, weapons and the many other expenses an officer accrued. The bill for the privilege of serving the Queen was high. Some officers did manage to survive on their salary. These parsimonious men kept a very different style to those with private incomes, creating a two-tiered world in the officers’ mess. The army had class barriers just as strong and as impenetrable as in wider society.

Jack forced his frozen joints into action, trying not to spill any of the precious coffee in the process. As he stood up the ground squelched obscenely under his feet and a puddle of water immediately formed around his mud-encrusted boots. His hand instinctively reached to the small of his back where painfully cramped muscles sent spasms of pain shooting down his legs. Backache was the bane of his life, inescapable and wearing, the legacy of a childhood spent heaving barrels of ale or shifting drunken bodies and made worse by the current damp and rain.

Around him, the rest of the company was starting to stir even though reveille was still some time off. The first hardy souls began to emerge from their blankets, their breath condensing in front of their mouths as they yawned and stretched their aching limbs.

‘Where are you from, Tommy?’ Jack was determined to find out about the man the battalion had foisted on to him. It was unheard of for an officer not to have an orderly but Jack had hitherto resisted all offers, hoping to be spared the intimate attentions of a servant. The idea of a having an orderly poked at his usually untroubled conscience.

‘Kent, sir, a small place called Womenswold, not far from Dover.’

‘I cannot say I have ever heard of it.’

‘I doubt you would’ve, sir. There’s not much there, it’s a farming village, you see. Everyone works on the land.’

Jack took in his orderly’s narrow shoulders and bony hands. He looked the archetypal British redcoat, if a little taller than average, with a height and build not much different to his own. Smith had an open, honest yet pinched face and a smattering of scars that revealed a childhood brush with smallpox. Jack’s new orderly looked more like the undernourished product of one of modern Britain’s overcrowed and polluted cities than a man raised in the fresh fields of the country, but Jack was not about to question another man’s past.

‘So what made you take the Queen’s shilling?’ Jack asked as he stamped his feet in an attempt force his frozen circulation into action. ‘Was it some scandalous affair with a farmer’s wife? Or did you steal the local squire’s daughter and tumble her in a haystack?’

Smith looked at his new officer, his face reddening, before he answered. ‘It was boredom, sir, plain and simple. There’s nothing so dull as farming. I wanted to do something, anything, to get out of that place. The life of a soldier just seemed so grand, sir. When I saw the colour party at the hopping fair, that was it. I just had to go.’

‘Well, it seems to me like we both had the same idea. Let’s hope we both live long enough to enjoy the glory.’ Jack flung the last gritty liquid from his mug and handed it back to Smith. ‘Thank you for the coffee. If you can make a brew like that, in as Godforsaken a place as this, then I am sure we will get on fine.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, sir. Do you think we’ll be in action soon?’

‘I am certain of it. We certainly did not come all this way for a holiday. Although, judging by the number of travelling gentlemen on board ship, that is exactly what some people have in mind. There were even a number of women on board, although General Raglan forbade it. I heard a story that one lady married to an officer in the cavalry was smuggled aboard right under Lord Lucan’s nose.’

‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me, sir. Old Lord Look-on couldn’t spot a doxy in a whorehouse.’

The conversation was brought to an abrupt conclusion by the call of the first bugles sounding reveille.

The call sounded muffled, the damp and chill in the air strangling the notes. This was the first time the bugle call had sounded on Russian soil, the raucous notes a challenge to the sleeping Russian bear.

The Light Company drilled alone. Since early that morning, they, along with the rest of the battalion, had been toiling in fatigue parties. The army was desperately trying to bring order out of the chaos of the landings that were still proceeding through a second day. When the battalion’s services were finally dispensed with, Jack had asked his colonel to give him leave to march his company a short distance from the battalion lines in an attempt to try to inject some much-needed vigour into the lacklustre fusiliers.

Colonel James Morris cherished his battalion. He fussed over it like an over-proud parent and he had been delighted that his new Light Company commander showed such enthusiasm. With the colonel’s blessing, and despite the sullen protests of the exhausted company, Jack had marched his fusiliers half a mile inland, seeking space away from the prying and critical eyes of the battalion. They were by no means the most forward British troops and neither Jack nor the colonel had been concerned that the Light Company would be marching into any danger – complacency that Jack would soon bitterly regret.

‘Captain Sloames, sir. Cossacks!’ Lieutenant Thomas could barely contain his excitement as he spotted the enemy troops on the crest of a ridge a thousand yards from where the Light Company was being drilled.

The men of the company stopped in mid-evolution, looking up to stare with fascination as the Russian irregular cavalry fanned out, forming line along the ridge. Stories of Cossack ferocity had been the talk of the army for months, their reputation as hard, vicious fighters growing with each retelling. Now the Light Company was privileged to be some of the first British troops to see their foe in the flesh.

‘Thank you, Mr Thomas. A little less excitement, if you please,’ Jack said with as much sangfroid as his racing heart would allow. ‘I’m sure they are just here to watch how well we can perform our drill and I’m equally sure they are as unimpressed as I am.’ Jack turned to face his company. ‘No one told you to stop. You look like frightened serving girls caught with their hands down the master’s trousers. Now, stand to attention and shoulder arms! Let us at least try to look like fusiliers. Sergeants, dress the ranks!’

The Light Company brought their rifles to their shoulders at the command while the three sergeants hurried down the line, pushing at a man here, pulling at another there, to make sure the line was dressed and ordered. Jack strode ahead of the line and as he walked he opened the leather case that held his field glasses at his hip. Captain Sloames had never scrimped on his equipment and the field glasses were new; they still smelt of their protective oil. They were manufactured by Dollond of London, the best that Sloames could afford, and the heavy brass they were made of felt lumpy and cold in Jack’s hands as he extended the lenses.

Jack took a deep breath as he focused on the Russian cavalry, both to settle his nerves and to steady his hands. He panned slowly down their line. The Light Company was being observed by half a Cossack
sotnya
,
around fifty irregular cavalry armed with fearsome ten and a half foot long lances that rested on a leather strap attached to the right foot. The light glistened off the iron tips of the alarming weapons, and Jack’s shoulder blades twitched involuntarily as his imagination dwelt on the deadly purpose of the wickedly sharp blades.

The Cossacks sat high in their saddles, feet above the belly of their horses which snorted and pawed at the tussocks of grass beneath their hooves. The men’s dress was loose and baggy, with a wide variety of different jackets. On their heads most wore a fur shako, often with a double pom-pom hanging to one side. The rest wore a motley array of differing headgear that served to enhance their foreign appearance.

In addition to the terrible lances, Jack could see a sabre hanging at the side of every man and a mixture of muskets, carbines and pistols strapped to their horses’ saddles. The Cossacks were well armed and looking for trouble. It was dawning on Jack that his small command might just be the sort of target the Cossacks had been waiting for.

Lieutenant Digby-Brown walked forward to join his captain. ‘They look a shabby crew. Are they truly Cossacks?’

‘I believe so.’ Jack kept his field glasses trained on the enemy cavalry.

Digby-Brown was trying his best to adjust to his commander’s curt and dismissive manner, even though it never failed to nettle him. It was obvious that in their short acquaintance his new captain had taken a dislike to him. Digby-Brown could not think with what justification Sloames had formed his poor opinion but he was certain the best way to proceed was to ignore the barbed remarks and prove his worth to his company commander.

‘There’s about fifty of them, I would say, sir.’

Jack ignored him, continuing to pan his field glasses slowly along the line of enemy cavalry.

‘Yes, definitely fifty.’

Jack’s mouth twitched in annoyance as his subaltern confirmed the obvious. ‘Are you of the opinion that I need assistance observing the enemy?’

‘No, sir, of course not.’

‘And do you think that I managed to make it all the way to the rank of captain without possessing the ability to count?’

‘No, sir! I was trying—’

‘Be quiet,’ Jack cut across him. ‘I can assure you, Lieutenant, that I am quite capable of counting the number of enemy troops without your damn interference.’

Jack went back to studying the Cossacks, his thoughts in turmoil. By keeping the glasses pressed to his face, he could avoid giving any orders. Right now, that was a good thing, as he had no idea what he should do next. He felt the gaze of his men burning into the back of his scarlet coat as they watched and waited for his command. It was as if their expectation was a physical presence leaning down on him, its weight pressing on his shoulders.

As he watched, the Cossacks started to move. Unlike the fusiliers, they moved fluidly and with confidence. Jack could not make out who was commanding the enemy troops. If there were any officers present then they were dressed in the same drab garb as their men, unlike their British counterparts who stood out against their troops like peacocks in a chicken coop. The left half of the Russian cavalry moved forward and down the slope, crossing obliquely in front of the right-hand troops and forming a new rank to its front. It was a calm demonstration of proficiency that was utterly chilling.

Jack finally pulled his field glasses away from his face, the purposeful deployment of the enemy forcing him to act. His last glimpse of the Cossacks showed them to be lifting the foot of their lances from the leather stirrup that held it in place as they rode, positioning it under their right armpits and readying it for use.

Jack turned to face his men, forcing himself to turn his back on the threat of fifty deadly lances. His throat felt constricted and dry so that he was forced to clear it noisily, despite knowing that it would make him appear nervous in front of the men.

‘Company! Prepare to load!’

The men stiffened, their bodies tensing as they readied themselves to load their newly issued Minié rifles.

Like any rifle, the inside of the barrel was grooved. When fired, the conically shaped minié bullet deformed at the base, allowing it to engage the rifling whilst sealing in the power of the exploding charge. The spinning ball was said to be accurate to six hundred yards, but the soldiers maintained it would penetrate a soldier at double that distance, pass through his knapsack and still have enough force to strike down men in the ranks behind.

The process of loading the rifle took around thirty seconds. Slower than the veterans of Waterloo could load their Brown Bess muskets, but the reduced rate of fire was more than made up for by the rifle’s vastly increased range, better accuracy, and the hitting power of the Minié balls themselves. A volley from a battalion armed with Minié rifles would devastate any opponent in a battle of musketry.

‘Company! Load!’ Jack bellowed the command and the men reacted immediately. In a sequence of movements they had practised until it had become second nature, the men of the Light Company loaded their rifles. Their rifle butts hit the wet soil as one, each the regulation six inches in front of the soldier’s body. The weapon was held in the left hand while the right hand deftly extracted a cartridge from the ammunition bag. The top of the cartridge was bitten off and the powder poured down the rifle’s barrel, swiftly followed by the Minié ball.

Their hands and arms moving in unison, the fusiliers whipped the ramrod out of the loops that held it suspended underneath the barrel and used it to ram the bullet down on to the powder. As soon as they had rammed it home, giving it two final taps to make sure it was resting on the powder, the ramrod was withdrawn and returned to its loops. The rifle’s butt was brought up from the ground to rest against the soldier’s right hip while a fresh percussion cap from the cap box on the front of his belt was fitted to the firelock.

The two ranks of Cossack horsemen stood ominously still. The Light Company finished loading, the fusiliers now as primed for a fight as their weapons. The company was formed into two ranks with the three sergeants and two lieutenants making a third line three paces behind the second rank.

Jack ordered the men to fix bayonets and then, with as calm a demeanour as he could muster, walked to his station on the right of the line. His men were in a precarious position. Sixty-three fusiliers, three sergeants and three officers were not much of a force but it had to be at least the equal of fifty mounted Cossacks. But Jack was not confident.

Twice he cleared his throat to order the men to withdraw and twice the order died on his lips. Trying to withdraw in an orderly fashion whilst being harried by the best light cavalry in the Russian army would be a desperate affair. Jack could sense the men’s growing unease. They were starting to fidget. He knew they needed firm leadership to steady them. He tried to imagine what any of his former captains would have done. What the real Captain Sloames might have said to calm the men’s anxiety. The responsibility of command was more daunting than he could ever have imagined. His right hand gripped and re-gripped the hilt of his sword, his indecision infuriating and frightening in equal measure. He sensed the first man in the rear rank make a shuffling movement backwards. The tiny movement rippled through the ranks as if the men were gently stirring in the light breeze that blew inshore from the coast.

The movement shamed him into action. If the men took it into their heads to run, they were all doomed. The Cossacks would pounce on them as soon as the tight formation broke up. On their own, the men would be slaughtered. He could not let that happen.

He strode forward to stand in front of the company, the heels of his boots hitting the ground with such force that each step sent an explosion of water out of the ground.

‘Stand fast!’ Jack demanded of his command, his eyes roving over the two ranks. ‘You are British fusiliers. Where is your goddamn pride?’ He raised his voice, challenging his men, hiding his lack of experience under a covering of anger.

The few fusiliers who had been stalwart enough to meet his gaze dropped their eyes.

‘We stand together and we face the enemy. We don’t show fear. We don’t show panic. We stand in silence and let them know they are facing the finest soldiers on this whole damn earth!’

Jack turned to observe the enemy. His show of anger might have disguised his indecision but it did nothing to stop the Cossacks. They began to advance before his eyes, the line of horsemen moving forward as one.