The Street Philosopher (36 page)

Boyce’s arrival in the crowded rifle pit drew a throaty, impatient growl from the senior officers assembled within. They had been waiting for him for nearly fifteen minutes: the meeting of a general and eleven other colonels, poised to lead a major action that could bring the enemy to its knees, kept in suspension solely by his tardiness. At the centre of the pit, dressed in a dark blue frock-coat rather than the tweeds worn by his subordinates, stood General Sir John Campbell. He looked pasty and drawn; rumour had it that the terrible tension of commanding the impending attack was rapidly bringing his health to ruin.

‘Mr Boyce!’ he snapped. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

By the General’s side was Colonel Yea of the 34th, appointed as second-in-command, who was as florid as Campbell was pale. He scowled through his monocle. ‘Bad form, Boyce. Damned bad form.’ There was a rumble of concurrence from his fellows. ‘The French are
fighting
, y’know, whilst we linger here! The Bear has launched an attack against the Mamelon!’

Boyce ignored everyone in the pit but Campbell. He came to attention. ‘My apologies, General, but I have just discovered that my wife has been killed. That is the cause of my regrettable lateness.’

The disposition of the pit towards him changed immediately. Campbell was aghast. ‘
Killed
, man? But how?’

‘A Russian, sir.’ Boyce was careful to keep his voice
sorrowful, but calm. ‘Dressed in civilian clothes–a spy, perhaps, or a deserter thinking to steal a few items from my house to fund his flight to the mainland. My wife appears to have disturbed him. He shot her with a pistol.’

The dismay of those around him was palpable. ‘Did you catch this villain?’ one of the colonels asked.

Boyce nodded. ‘A couple of privates from my regiment pursued him out into open country, at the rear of the plateau. They managed to bring him down with their miniés.’ He paused. ‘But nothing could be done for my poor Madeleine.’

There was a brief silence. ‘My dear fellow,’ mumbled Campbell. He looked at the ground uncertainly for a moment before coming to a resolution. ‘You must be relieved of your command,’ he said firmly. ‘Who is your lieutenant-colonel? You must be relieved, Boyce, straight away. I insist.’ The colonels, now filled with pity and a little guilt for their impatience, made a range of sympathetic sounds, signalling their agreement.

Boyce, still at attention, looked into Campbell’s bloodshot eyes. ‘General, I humbly request that you permit me to fight this engagement. My place, sir, is here. It is where my dear wife would wish me. What use has war for a man in mourning? Far better that I serve my Queen and country, and face those who took my Madeleine from me.’

The assemblage of officers and adjutants, their attitude to Boyce now quite reversed, murmured admiringly. ‘Jolly good show,’ someone pronounced; ‘A fine display,’ declared another.

Campbell nodded understandingly. ‘Very well, old chap, very well,’ he said, laying a hand briefly on Boyce’s shoulder. ‘Now, I’m afraid we must proceed.’

The old General turned slightly, and raised his voice, addressing the group. They were told that Lord Raglan had every confidence that the French would repulse the Russians from the fort of the Mamelon, and then go on to take the Malakhoff Tower as planned. Once it was theirs, the attacking brigade of the Fourth Division, led by Campbell himself, would approach the Great Redan from the left; and that of the Light, under Colonel Yea, would approach it from the right.

Campbell looked around the men in the rifle pit. ‘Go to your men and await the signal–two rockets, to be fired together. But be aware that when the Tricolour flies above the Malakhoff Tower, we attack. May Heaven watch over us, gentlemen. God save the Queen.’

‘God save the Queen,’ repeated the officers, coming to attention before moving off into the trenches with their aides.

Boyce stood still as his peers strode past him, uttering awkward words of condolence. Madeleine’s voice still rang in his head, screaming at him as he pursued her around their little farmhouse. She had shown him contempt and anger before, countless times, spitting names at him in her mother tongue, glaring at him defiantly after he’d quieted her with his fists; but all the ordeals of their wretched marriage had been as nothing compared with the searing hatred that had poured out of her then. She had reacted to the drawings as if they were the product of his turpitude rather than her own, as if the stigma of her repulsive wrongdoing was somehow reflected off her, like bright sunlight off a polished silver tray, dazzling the accuser instead of the accused.

Her immediate wish, naturally enough he supposed, had been to seize them, and tear them to pieces. This could not be allowed. He had decided that the sketches were to form the centrepiece of a divorce case so devastating it would see her all but driven out naked into the wilderness. She dived across the room; he moved to avoid her; furniture was upset before them both. Realising the futility of her pursuit, she started to throw plates, cups, pans, even chairs. Tiring of this after a minute or two, he strode towards her purposefully–prompting her to flee into her room, shrieking as she went.

The first flies of the day were stirring in the trenches. Boyce waved some of them away with his hand, trying to remember what action he had thought he was going to take as he followed her. The memory seemed somehow dislocated from him, as if it were something he had seen someone else do, or perhaps read about somewhere. She had slammed the door behind her and attempted to shut him out, but she was no match for him in a contest of strength. He forced
his way in, gripped hold of her quite savagely, and asked if she was aware, if she had
any conception
in that empty, frivolous head of hers, of the irreparable damage she had done to him? Of the deadly blows her shameful conduct had cast against his name, his reputation, his honour?

Even as he walked through the British works, with the sounds of mortal struggle drifting over from the Mamelon, the recollection of the laugh Madeleine gave in response to this question made Boyce shudder. It had been so bitter, so caustic and scornful that it made him let go of her and take a step back. The drawings slipped from his grasp, scattering on to the floor around her. She was no longer interested in them, however. Crouching in the candlelight like a vicious animal, she started to speak, in a strange, rapid voice, of how openly she had defied him; of how she had assisted her lover with the concoction of his venomous reports for the
Courier
; of how she had been in his arms only minutes before, exchanging words of eternal love; of how he was going to be watching the attack that very morning, alert for errors.

His hand had gone to his gun. Had he been hoping that this would be enough, that this alone might check her, and make her fall silent? Or had he been intending to draw it, to use it, even then? He could not say; but she watched him closely, and did not pause even for a second. In fact, if anything, her revelations became frantic, her accent growing thicker, the words emerging so quickly that they were packed tightly together into blocks dictated only by her gasping breaths. She was not so incomprehensible, though, that he could not tell that she was saying things that had no place on the lips of a woman. It was filthy talk of
fucks,
quims and
pricks
; disgusting disclosures about the extent of their depravity, their heedless disregard of the risk of discovery; foul boasts of how many times they had fornicated in his bed, in amongst his sheets, or on top of his trunks, sprawled out lustfully over his uniforms.

The first two shots were fired simply to put an end to her and her devilish utterances. She had been thrown down immediately. He remembered the sight of the singed holes
punched in her petticoats, and the welling blackness beneath. She was not dead then, though. Her hands, flung out as she had landed, started to find their way slowly towards her wounds, scrabbling through the drawings which lay beneath her. Her eyes were open very wide, her mouth gaping. The expression on her face, he recalled clearly, was not one of shock, or agony, or terror, but of a strange relief.

Boyce had realised that she was trying to speak. But he’d heard enough. His face impassive, he levelled the pistol a second time and fired the remaining four bullets in quick succession. Gun smoke filled the small, airless room, making him cough. Slowly, Boyce reloaded the revolver, putting the spent percussion caps back into his ammunition pouch. He went over to the window, extinguished the candle that stood on the sill and peered outside. The yard was empty, as was the road beyond it. Turning back, he bent down to place Madeleine’s outstretched arms in her lap, and then covered her with a blanket taken from the pile on her chair, thinking to create an impression of propriety, of official awareness, should anyone come across the body before he returned. He left the house soon after.

It was justified. Boyce knew that it was justified. What man of honour could have done otherwise before such provocation? He resolved not to dwell upon it. He had other matters to look to now–other enemies to repay. What was it she had said? ‘
He will be there, you hopeless fool–he will be there,
watching you with a righteous eye! And when men die because of
your stupidity, he will ensure once again that the whole of England
knows of it!
’

Boyce entered the advance works around the Quarries. The trenches and pits were filled with the soldiers of the Light Division’s assaulting brigade. Fairlie and Pierce were up ahead, conferring with some captains and subalterns from the 99th. It was starting to grow light. Boyce was confident that his prey was nearby, and would soon make himself apparent. He selected a suitable vantage point and settled down to wait.

Private Cregg sat in the advance works just beyond the Quarries with the larger part of the assaulting brigade–men from six regiments, all awaiting the order to move. Over the top, after two hundred yards of almost entirely open ground, lay the Great Redan, its guns firing across diagonally at the French forts.

The day was not seven hours old, yet for Cregg it had already delivered a couple of most unwelcome orders. First of all, he had found that the 99th’s battalion had been assigned to the attacking rather than to the reserve brigade. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Lieutenant Nunn, the same booby who’d swiped his drawings, had taken him out of his company, and directed him up to the very front of the attack–to the line they called the Forlorn Hope. Hardly a name to lift a cove’s spirits, he’d grumbled as he climbed to his feet.

The cause for this miserable twist of fortune, Cregg knew, had to be the drawings. For a short while it had been perfect. Dozens upon dozens had seen them, and spread the word to all their pals. Then Nunn had stuck his nose in and it had been a quick slide down from there. Boyce had been told right away, you could bet on that. This posting to the Forlorn Hope reeked of him. Dan Cregg was a dead man. The drawings would be burnt, and the joke forgotten. As ever, the Colonel had won, and the private soldier had lost–lost the lot.

And to top it all, his hand was giving him serious trouble. The two remaining fingers had grown yet more stiff and inflexible, rewarding his tentative efforts to move them with sharp shocks of pain. He had no idea how he was supposed to fight in this condition. Even holding a rifle was proving a stern challenge. The ache was spreading, as it often did, from his arm, up the muscles of his shoulders and neck, to the base of his head. His dejection became laced with impatience. Oh come on, he thought, it’s all but light, let’s just get it bleedin’ over with. The idea of an end, right then, was not entirely without appeal.

‘Sharpshooter!’ someone shouted.

Bullets struck the rim of the trench, about fifteen yards from where Cregg sat; then, in a cloud of sandy dust, a man tumbled down amongst the redcoats sheltering there. It was one of theirs, making a dash overland to the advance parallel to avoid a lengthy trudge through the trenches. Was it a messenger, bearing news of a reprieve? A change of plan?

No such luck. The dust settled to reveal a wiry, clean-shaven civvie, dressed in a colourless coat that was flecked with dried blood. Cregg squinted–there was something faintly familiar about him. The soldiers of the 33rd, amongst whom he’d landed, were helping him up, brushing his coat and handing him his hat. Glad for any manner of distraction, Cregg picked up his minié and crawled along towards him, over the boots of his comrades.

‘Oi, cock!’ he yelled over the roar of the Russian guns. ‘Oi, look ’ere, pal!’

The man was spluttering, spitting out dirt and feeling his ribs as if checking a wound. He looked up at Cregg, his face pale with pain.

‘Now, I know that I knows you,’ Cregg carried on, pointing at him with his good hand, ‘but I can’t say where from. You any wiser?’

The man coughed; there were spots of blood on his lips and teeth. ‘I believe I bound your hand once,’ he managed to shout, ‘down at the British Hotel.’

Cregg snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it–the British ’Otel! Back before that nigger bitch ’ad me threw out.’ The soldier
considered this new arrival with sceptical wonder. ‘What you doin’ ’ere, cock? Takin’ a leaf out of Mother bleedin’ Seacole’s book, are we, and a-comin’ up to work among the fightin’ men as they fall?’

He didn’t respond to this. ‘My name is Thomas Kitson,’ he stated, as loudly as he could. ‘I’m looking for someone–Richard Cracknell, the newspaperman.’

Cregg grinned. ‘Oh yes, I know that gent. We are good pals, me and Mister Cracknell.’ He gave this Mr Kitson a mysterious wink.

The fellow paused uncomprehendingly for a second. ‘There is another man,’ he went on, ‘another civilian. An illustrator. Younger. Have you either of them? Please, it is of the greatest importance.’

Cregg thought of the drawings, and how he had found them. Those damn things had caused him quite enough trouble already. He was saying nothing. So he shook his head. ‘If they’re anywhere, I’d say that-away, back at the Quarries. You’ve come too far forward, pal.’

Without another word, Mr Kitson started back along the trench, keeping low.

‘Remember me to Mister Cracknell, if you find ’im!’ Cregg bawled at his back. ‘Dan Cregg of the 99th!’

‘They’ve done it!’ cried Cracknell, squinting through his field glass. ‘God save ’em all, they’ve done it! The Mamelon is safe!
Vive la France
!’

The redcoats crowding the trench around him gave a muted cheer. Cracknell lifted the glass again, poking it carefully through a crenulation of pickets towards the smooth hill occupied by the fort of the Mamelon. This ugly structure, built around a hill from a loose collection of sandbags and low stone parapets, was sparking with cannon-fire. It was surrounded by a thick covering of the slain and the wounded, the majority of them Russian. Loose, panicked columns of enemy soldiers were streaming away from the position towards their own line. A large French force was commencing a counter-attack, companies of scarlet-trousered Zoaves charging around the sides of the hill, heading towards
the unclaimed territory that separated them from the Russian defences.

Cracknell excitedly swivelled his glass in the direction of this no-man’s land. Looming up over it, through a thin film of early morning mist, was the French target–the Malakhoff Tower. The tower itself was circular and about five or six storeys high. It had been ruined some time ago, one of its sides having almost completely collapsed, but it had served as the focus for one of the largest concentrations of earthworks and artillery on the Russian line. As the correspondent watched, its guns began to fire on the advancing Zoaves.

‘By my soul,’ he muttered, ‘I should really be writing this down.’ He opened his pocketbook and licked the tip of his pencil.

The Tomahawk had been hard at work for almost a minute when someone stood before him, blocking his light. He knew at once who it was. ‘Why, Thomas Kitson,’ he exclaimed sarcastically, without looking up. ‘It’s been months. How the hell are you?’

‘Where is Styles, Cracknell?’

He sighed; such a predictable question. Closing his book contemptuously, he gave Kitson his full attention. His former junior had a new, almost clerical formality about him, due largely to his beard having gone; only a pair of modest sideburns had been retained. The fellow was also leaning slightly, like a building with a couple of rows of bricks knocked out of one side. One of those long arms was against his midriff–the location, Cracknell guessed, of his injury.

‘Shouldn’t you be back at the British Hotel, Kitson?’ he sneered. ‘Swabbing wounds and washing the feet of the crippled soldiers?’

Kitson grasped hold of his shoulder. ‘Tell me where he is.’

‘What the devil is it to you?’ He pushed Kitson away. ‘You forfeited your contract months ago, my friend! The affairs of the
Courier
are no longer your concern!’

The guns of the Malakhoff were growing louder, and the bursts of explosive noise began to have a bruising, ringing impact upon the ears. Occasional, distant shouts of ‘
Vive
l’Empereur!’
drifted out from the battle, along with the wails of the wounded. Kitson shoved past him, heading on towards the right side of the Quarries, powered by an evidently overwhelming determination to hunt Styles down. Cracknell realised that, like him, Kitson must have only very recently learned that their illustrator was still on the peninsula. He knew that Kitson had an abiding sense of responsibility for the boy, stemming from a rather self-important notion that he had somehow inspired Styles to put himself forward for service in the Crimea.

At any rate, Cracknell had no solid information as to the illustrator’s whereabouts, even had he been inclined to share it. Styles had failed to appear at their designated meeting place. Given his continued enthusiasm for the blackest parts of war, Cracknell’s supposition was that he’d gone further forward than had been agreed. The Tomahawk of the
Courier
, for all his famous bravery, had decided down in the trenches that he would hang back a little for this one. Above, the brightening sky was as clear as glass. It was going to be a fine day. Climbing out before a large Russian fort in such conditions was little short of suicide. A massacre was surely on the cards; but, as he watched Kitson walk away through the siege-works, the senior correspondent knew that he could hardly now permit himself to remain to the rear of both his feckless juniors. Pocketbook still in his hand, he gave chase.

A few yards apart, the two former comrades turned a corner and crossed through a large rifle pit, which had been reduced to little more than a deep crater by recent artillery bombardment. It was crammed with soldiers from the assaulting brigade, preparing themselves for action. They had a bleak alertness about them that was very different from the stoic demeanour of the Guardsmen Cracknell had passed in the reserves. As he tucked away his notebook and fumbled with a cigarette, however, the correspondent realised that a number of those crouched down in the shadows were also regarding him rather strangely.

The Tomahawk of the
Courier
was well used to bearing the scrutiny of both officers and the common soldiery. He was, after all, a face of the campaign, a readily recognisable
character. The looks he was receiving that morning, however, were different somehow. Usually he inspired either admiration or scorn, and although both of these sentiments were present, they were tempered with something else, something unaccountable; something that was fiendishly close to mockery. Cracknell could not imagine what he might have done to deserve this change. Was it his lengthy absence from the front, perhaps?

Halfway across the pit, the facings on these soldiers’ jackets went from white and green to yellow, and their disposition towards him grew noticeably more hostile. Cracknell looked at the numeral on their caps. It was as he suspected; they had moved in amongst the battalion of the 99th. Whilst the majority of the rank-and-file were illiterate, they had no doubt been filled with lies about the Tomahawk and his work by officers loyal to their Colonel, his frequent target. The soldiers began to hiss and mutter, and stick out their boots to trip him. Someone spat, and a milky gobbet of phlegm landed on the shoulder of his blue coat. Kitson had vanished.

Major Pierce came into view. Spotting Cracknell, his swine-like features lit with malicious pleasure. ‘Well look here!’ he cried. ‘This, men, this here is the bugger who called
us
, the brave comrades of Her Majesty’s Army, the fruit of a rotten tree! He called us rotten, my lads,
rotten
–in the bloody papers as well!’

Intrepidly, Cracknell stood his ground, doing his best to correct the Major’s scurrilous distortion of his words–to point out to the idiot soldiers that he was on their bloody side, and that their officers were about to order them to their deaths for no useful purpose. But it was no use. They started kicking and punching, spitting on him again, pulling at his clothes, tearing away both his field glass and his pocketbook–all the while shouting ‘
rotten
yerself!’ As he was beaten down, Cracknell found himself almost laughing at the absurdity of it. After all that had happened, could it really be his fate to be killed by a mob of
British soldiers
? Then, with eerie suddenness, they all backed away, falling quiet as they did so. Cracknell lowered his arms and peered upwards. Before him was none other than Colonel Boyce,
his moustache erect and furious. The correspondent wiped some blood from his lip and opened his mouth to speak. Boyce grabbed hold of him, heaving him to his feet and throwing him back against the wickerwork gabions of the trench wall with a brutality that took him quite by surprise.

‘What are you doing out here, villain?’ Boyce growled. ‘I thought you had learned your lesson about such interference!’

‘That was but a brief sabbatical,’ Cracknell replied quickly, trying to appear conspicuously unbowed by his opponent’s savagery. ‘Wouldn’t miss this one for the world. Frontal attack on an enormous fort, without the benefit of a bombardment? Lord Raglan certainly is confident, I’ll say that much for him.’

‘That son of a lord, you mean? The fruit of your rotten tree?’ The Colonel reddened with rage. ‘By God, you will pay for your calumnies!’

‘Where is the
Pilate
then, Boyce?’ the Tomahawk retorted. ‘Did Norton get it home safely? What did you have to offer him in the end?’

The leather of Boyce’s gloves squeaked as he screwed up the correspondent’s lapels and forced him back into the gabions; they began to crack open with the pressure, releasing a stream of gritty soil on to Cracknell’s face.

Boyce was close against him now. ‘I have killed her,’ he whispered coldly.

Cracknell squirmed, rubbing the dirt from his eyes. ‘What?’

‘I have killed her,’ Boyce repeated, ‘and I swear to God that before this morning is out I will kill you as well.’

Then the Colonel released him, stepping away and rejoining his men, watching for his reaction. Cracknell pulled himself back upright, shaking the earth from his coat, staring back at Boyce in complete mystification. Slowly, he realised what he had been told: Madeleine had been murdered by her husband. That such a thing could happen had never so much as entered his mind. It seemed impossible. With disturbing vividness, he remembered how she had struggled in his arms not an hour before; he could almost feel the warmth and strength of her slender young limbs, fighting
with a vigour that had made him smile a little even as she’d cursed him.

Cracknell could think of nothing whatsoever to say. Then, all at once, he knew that he had to get as far from Boyce as he possibly could. He shouldered his way roughly through the redcoats towards the opposite side of the pit.

‘Let the fool go,’ the Colonel ordered disdainfully, somewhere behind him. ‘He is nothing to us.’