Until the Colours Fade (44 page)

‘We’d better.’

Having parted with Bartlett at the top of the col, George and Magnus went on a further mile to the Second Division’s
encampment
. Outside George’s tent they found his orderly frying salt pork over a small fire, having spent an hour, he said, digging up enough roots to provide fuel for the cooking. George had brought up some onions from Balaclava, which were peeled and sliced, ready to be put in with the pork. Still watching the meat, the orderly began grinding up some green-looking coffee beans in the hollow of an 8-inch shell, pounding them with a round-shot. The tent was circular and had a sunken floor to exclude draughts, and an external drainage trench to prevent flooding.

Magnus followed George in and saw two officers playing cards by the light of a dim lamp hanging from a bracket screwed onto the central pole. The air was thick with cigar smoke and the
fumes from a charcoal brazier. Balanced on the top of this
smoking
stove was a basin of mulled wine. Horse blankets served as a carpet, and, apart from a broken-down sofa taken from a house in Balaclava, piled up shell-boxes and barrels did duty for chairs and tables. George described how that morning he had woken to find the canvas above him frozen into a stiff glassy sheet and how beads of ice had studded his beard and blanket. George and the officer he shared with – the younger of the two card-players – slept on bread sacks placed over straw pallets resting on boards. Magnus was assured that he would be welcome to sleep on the sofa till he had his own tent.

George ladled out four glasses of mulled wine and introduced Magnus to the two officers. When Magnus tasted his wine, he discovered that it contained almost as much rum as claret.
Harrington
, the older of the two officers, put away the cards and handed over some notes to Towers, a willowy young man with a superior manner and a habit of stroking his drooping dark
moustaches
when he talked. Harrington was a stout thick-necked major with pale thinning hair adhering greasily to his pink scalp. He had pleasant hazel eyes, and small plump hands with very dirty nails. Getting up, he strode over to George.

‘Well, what do you think of them?’

‘Of what, major?’ asked George.

‘The boots of course,’ replied Harrington, clicking his heels
together
.

‘They look very well on you.’

Towers smiled to himself and sipped his warm wine
appreciatively
.

‘Care for a pair like ’em?’ asked Harrington.

‘Wouldn’t refuse them at any rate,’ said George.

Harrington lit a cigar and sat down on the sofa.

‘Young Towers here paid one of those sailor boys in the Naval Brigade batteries to dig up a few Russians – the ones killed in Friday’s sortie. Could have had a pair of silk socks too if the Turks hadn’t got there first.’

‘They’ve been digging up British graves too,’ said Towers, ‘for blankets. There’s supposed to be a new order forbidding any more men being buried in their blankets.’

‘Nothing to do with the Turks,’ replied Harrington. ‘There aren’t enough blankets.’

George suddenly reached inside his coat and started
scratching
fiercely.

‘Take no notice, Crawford,’ muttered Harrington. ‘We’re all
crawling here. Ain’t that so, Towers?’

‘Some of us haven’t got lice
and
fleas,’ Towers replied coolly.

‘I have,’ said George, adding with a wan smile: ‘And there are rats in the latrines. You ought to be on your father’s flagship, Crawford.’

Once Towers and Harrington had realised that Magnus was indeed Admiral Crawford’s son, he was deluged with requests to get them potted meat, dried figs, fresh fruit and numerous other delicacies the fleet was supposed to be enjoying. At this
inappropriate
moment the orderly came in with two helpings of fried pork and onions for George and Magnus.

As the wine started to take effect, Magnus no longer felt as
irritated
with George as he had done immediately after his father’s identity had been given away; in a predominantly aristocratic regiment, a manufacturer’s son would have to take what
opportunities
came his way for raising his stock. When George had been in the yeomanry, Magnus had detested him for his
incompetence
, but now when any incompetence might kill him, he felt sympathy for him. His father had forced him into the Guards for social reasons, forgetting that in time of war the Brigade, in their role of shock troops, always suffered the worst casualties. The thought of George leading a bayonet charge was a strange one, but if he had not already done so, Magnus had no doubt that he would soon have to.

While they were drinking some of the most peculiar tasting coffee Magnus had ever tasted, Towers told a story about his company’s cook, who had been carrying down a large jug of coffee to the batteries, when he had been hit by a shell fragment in the back of the neck. The wound had been little more than a nick but the unfortunate man had fallen and been blinded by the scalding contents of his jug. George then chipped in with a conversation he had had with the colonel of the 46th Regiment, who had been suffering from delirium tremens, a complaint he put down entirely to the Russian climate, suggesting that if the army stayed in the Crimea much longer, the ‘infection’ would prove as widespread as typhus fever and cholera.

During the next hour, while Magnus was questioned about public attitudes to the war at home, George became increasingly fidgety and anxious. Shortly before nine the orderly came in and told him that his company had fallen in and were ready to march down to the trenches. Strapping on his revolver, George told Magnus he would see him at breakfast and not to bother to get up if there was an alarm in the night, then, picking up the greatcoat
he shared with Towers, he went out into the night.

Magnus followed him at once. Twenty yards away George’s men were standing at ease in two ranks, stamping their feet and swinging their arms to keep warm; only two or three had
greatcoats
, the rest carried blankets instead. Above the undulating plateau, tiny stars twinkled in the clear frosty sky, and as far as the eye could see, the ground was specked with the widely
dispersed
glowing pin-points of watch-fires, which cast a red-grey light on the tents nearest them.

‘Poor devils,’ said George, jerking his head in the direction of his men, ‘in the trenches two nights out of three, and half of them fall asleep on their feet. In the last Russian sortie, half a company of the Rifle Brigade were bayoneted before they woke. We’re
supposed
to shoot anybody who sleeps on duty. There wouldn’t be many left if we did.’ He buttoned his coat and looked at Magnus awkwardly. ‘I’ve learnt a thing or two out here, Crawford. By God, I have.’

‘Good luck,’ shouted Magnus as George joined his men. He had no difficulty in imagining the awful strain of nights spent in the forward trenches. If any officer did let a sortie get through to the batteries behind the trenches, dozens of guns could be spiked during the ensuing confusion. The thought of spending nine hours in a shallow hole in the ground straining one’s eyes into the darkness and listening for footsteps would be enough to drive a nervous man mad. Then at uncertain intervals during the night each side would be sure to fire grape and canister at each other’s advanced posts and rifle pits in the hope of catching working
parties
digging new trenches or repairing damaged parapets.

Magnus had heard that the Brigade of Guards had come out three thousand strong and was now down to twelve hundred on duty. A betting man, he reflected, would not put much money on George getting home alive. Another battle like the Alma, or even a lesser action such as the defence of Balaclava, and Bartlett, Towers, Harrington and George could very well all be dead. And if they survived that ordeal, dysentery, cholera and exposure were still more formidable enemies to be reckoned with. As he heard a sharp rattle of musketry coming from the trenches, Magnus tensed and only relaxed when certain that it came from the far left where the French held the line. A year ago, he thought, I would not have cared if George had been shot down in front of me. He wondered for a moment whether George’s friendliness merely meant that he had not yet given up all hope of marrying Catherine. Remembering his vehement opposition,
Magnus felt a sharp twinge of remorse; the animosity he had felt towards George at Bentley’s seemed to have taken place in another age. He shook his head and paused a little before lifting the flap of the tent.

The morning had as usual been misty and bitterly cold, but by noon the sun had broken through, bringing an almost spring-like warmth to the air: a mixed blessing to the three hundred sailors, dragging six heavy ships’ guns up the Balaclava col. Not long before, their hands had been too numb and cold to grip properly; now their clothes were soaked with sweat and their mouths parched. All those pulling at the drag ropes had discarded their coats, and many had stripped off their shirts as well. The pace achieved earlier in the morning – half-a-mile in three hours – seemed unlikely to be repeated before the following day.

Charles Crawford walked up and down the line of guns, exhorting his men and trying to get the various ships’ crews to race each other: a tactic which had hitherto been successful, but was becoming steadily less effective. Charles hoped to be able to get four 32-pounders and two 68-pounders into No. 2 Battery in the Naval Brigade’s section of the British ‘Right Attack’ by the end of the week. If he succeeded, his men would be the first to have dragged such heavy guns up the seven-mile col in under five days – a feat still more remarkable when much of the track was muddy and the 32-pounders on ships’ carriages with small wooden truck-wheels. Knowing that whether turning the
capstan
or scrubbing and holystoning the decks, the men always worked better to a song, Charles had placed a fifer or fiddler cross-legged on the breech of each gun, with a boat’s ensign
flying
beside him, and had ordered the playing of accompaniments to well-known marches and shanties. As back muscles tensed and the men strained and heaved at the ropes, the sound of their voices, echoing and dying in the desolate and stony hills, moved Charles to pride and sadness. Pride in their confidence and in his responsibility for them; sadness at the undernourished look of many of them, and in the vulnerability of their white bodies, exposed to the glaring midday sun – seeming whiter still in
contrast
with their ruddy hands and necks. The softness of their skin, and his, the cold hardness of the gun-metal, and the thought of the terrible months they would all be spending in the batteries under fire, made Charles shudder as he heard their defiant voices, small in the vast landscape, and the cheerful jokes
and shouts of applause greeting the end of each song. He felt paternal towards them but not patronising. If they were
cannon-fodder
, so was he. Every five minutes or so, if a steeper slope was in prospect, he would call for a brief rest and in that time add a few men to those already at the drag ropes, or rest a few of the weaker ones if the track was levelling off.

The carriages were being pulled up breech forwards by means of three separate drags to each gun, with fifteen men to every rope. Three sailors steered from behind with a long handspike inserted in the muzzle, and four more to each crew were employed clearing stones out of the way, laying down planks or sacking when the mud became bad, and placing chocks behind the wheels when there was danger of a gun rolling back. The shot, shells and cartridges had been taken on ahead in carts the day before; Charles had also had to organise tents and stores for his contingent, and all the gun-platforms, hold-fasts and tackles: arrangements which had occupied him in Balaclava for most of the three weeks since handing over command of
Scylla.

His decision to offer himself for one of the three captains’ posts in the shore-based Naval Brigade had been made after he had learned from his father that no further active naval
involvement
in the war was likely before the spring. The Brigade’s
fourteen
hundred men on the other hand could count upon continual action in their shore batteries throughout the winter, fighting alongside the Royal Artillery. Charles’s appointment, when it came, had undoubtedly owed something to his father’s influence with Admiral Dundas, but more to the marked prejudice among most senior captains against serving ashore.

Detestation of idleness apart, Charles’s principal reason for joining the Brigade had been his suspicion that his father expected him to go where the fighting was. As a lieutenant on the East African coast, he had gained a reputation for bravery:
pursuing
well armed slave dhows into the mangrove swamps in launches and cutters with a handful of men; landing in
dangerous
breakers and attacking barracoons and burning Arab boats pulled up on the beaches. His support of
Vengeance
under the guns of Fort Constantine had added to this reputation. The good opinion of others, his father in particular, was vital to him;
helping
him to forget the doubts and fears of personal weakness which he felt whenever ashore on half-pay. Others might thrive on reflection and periods of tranquillity, but Charles only felt truly himself when committed to a firm course of action, to
working
within the confinement of a specific task. Danger weakened
some men’s resolution; in Charles’s case it was a stimulant to decisiveness; an opportunity for proving to himself and others that his will was unshakeable. Forced on by his need to be admired, and by the expectations of others, he felt no loss of
freedom
. On the contrary, it was only when acting out the role he supposed was expected of him that he felt free; only when choices were behind him, and a single duty lay ahead, could he face the future with equanimity.

In the afternoon, leaving the guns in charge of a lieutenant, Charles rode up to the Naval Brigade encampment on the
plateau
, where he drank a glass of hock with Captain Lushington, the senior naval officer ashore, and was then taken down through the communication trenches to No. 2 Battery, which he would in future be commanding. Apart from the occasional crackle of small arms fire from the advanced saps of the opposing trenches, there was no firing going on and the sailors were
leaning
back against the traverses, smoking pipes and watching a party of engineers extending the parapets and strengthening them with the usual earth-filled wicker gabions.

From the raised firing step Charles scanned the enemy defences with a telescope. Never before had he been so close to the principal Russian bastions of the Redan and Malakoff. But the number of guns in these massive batteries, and their
formidable
chain of connecting earthworks, was not what made him catch his breath; the sight which sent a momentary shiver of fear to his heart was the nature of the ground which would have to be crossed before these batteries could be taken – and taken they would have to be if Sebastopol was to fall. First there was the abatis, a thick tangled barrier of sharpened branches and tree trunks, then a network of trenches and rifle pits, then a long smooth slope with no fold or wrinkle in the earth to give
advancing
troops cover from the guns in the Redan. His hand shook a little as he lowered the telescope, for that had only been the beginning. A broad deep ditch and a palisade still lay ahead before the ramparts of the batteries could be stormed.

As he jumped down from the firing step, he caught sight of a dark stain on the ground beside one of the guns; the blood was caked and dry; its surface cracked into tiny diamond shapes,
lifting
a little at the edges. There had been no rain for several days. Charles closed his telescope and walked across to join
Lushington
who was leaning against the sand-bagged entrance to the magazine.

‘Will the Brigade take part in any general asault?’ he asked as
casually as he knew how.

‘Undoubtedly.’

Charles managed a dry laugh.

‘Let’s hope we’ll have some reliable reserves behind us.’

‘Of course they may attack us first.’

‘Would you in their position?’ laughed Charles, certain that Lushington had been joking.

‘You and I don’t expect them to. But mightn’t that be a rather good reason?’

Charles shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

‘I don’t think I’d put money on it.’

Before they left the battery, Charles looked back at the white stone buildings of Sebastopol shimmering in the distance, and saw the sun glinting on the golden dome of a church; the water in the roadstead was a dazzling blue. Near the centre of the town, the streets he had been told were pleasantly broad and lined with acacias. And will I be there next spring, he wondered, walking under those white flowering trees?

As he was entering the communication trench leading out of the battery, he heard his name called out from behind, and turned to see Humphrey smiling at him.

‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’

Lushington laughed, evidently supposing that Charles had spoken roughly as a heavy-handed joke.

‘His duty, I hope. Lord Goodchild is one of our new mids.’

Charles stared blankly at his senior officer as though he had not heard him aright.

‘I left orders with Commander Mason that none of
Scylla
’s mids were to volunteer for service ashore.’

‘Mason was invalided last week. Didn’t you hear?’ asked Lushington, clearly surprised by Charles’s sudden displeasure. ‘Lord Goodchild asked to join in person on
Britannia.
I cleared it with Buchan, Mason’s replacement.’

‘I see,’ murmured Charles, thinking of how horrified his father would be when he learned what Humphrey had done.
Scylla
had been on the point of sailing for Malta for repairs and refitting after her mauling, and the boy should have gone with her; he would have been out of harm’s way for six weeks at least. By moving to the Naval Brigade, Charles had hoped to escape the constant memories of Helen which every sight of her son had evoked in him. Now, with numerous other worries to contend with, he would always be afraid for the boy’s safety; and, short of pneumonia or a wound, nothing could get him out in under four
months. His release from
Scylla
would already have gone through Admiral Dundas’s office. The realisation that Humphrey, by volunteering for service in the batteries, had merely behaved as he himself had done, did not make Charles feel any more sympathetic towards him.

Back at the Naval Camp, in Lushington’s tent, Charles read through the general orders to the Brigade and learned more about the precise duties which would be expected of him. When he rose to leave, Lushington took him by the arm. He looked serious and concerned.

‘About young Goodchild, Crawford,’ he said in his gruff
gravelly
voice. ‘You’re surely not against middies getting a taste of action? Did neither of us any harm, did it? Boys are insensitive little brutes. I’ve often thought they feel less than grown men.’

Charles listened impassively to these views which he had often heard used to justify the ‘blooding’ of cadets and midshipmen.

‘Perhaps, sir, you were unaware that I have a personal
concern
for Lord Goodchild.’

Lushington clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Of course I knew that. That’s why he’s in your battery. As a matter of fact he asked to be under you. He’s a great admiration for you, Crawford. Told me about that scrimmage you were in the other week.’ He broke off and looked down at the sailcloth on the floor of the tent. ‘Whatever your present-day cynics may say, hero worship’s a fine thing in a boy.’

‘If it doesn’t kill him,’ murmured Charles.

‘I don’t like to make this observation, Captain Crawford, but he holds Her Majesty’s Commission and this is a war.’

Before Charles could reply, the sentry came in and saluted.

‘Four o’clock, sir.’

‘Then make it so,’ replied Lushington, who had noticed that Charles, as a captain himself, had been about to give the
customary
order. Moments later they heard the bell outside the tent struck eight times to mark the end of the watch. The fact that the camp’s routine was the same as a ship’s would normally have pleased Charles, but now it meant nothing to him at all.

‘Perhaps I should tell you,’ Lushington went on quietly, ‘that the young man didn’t seek me out on purpose; he came aboard
Britannia
to collect mail for his ship and met me at the
entry-port
. I’d been seeing Admiral Dundas.’

‘I wouldn’t have blamed him even if he’d come here to see you. It’s just been a shock, you understand. In his place I’d have wanted to go ashore.’

‘Pluck deserves commendation, eh?’

‘Certainly.’

Lushington’s genuine relief impressed Charles. It was not every acting commodore who bothered about the feelings of
midshipmen
. In retrospect he also felt touched and somewhat guilty that Humphrey had been praising him when he had given the boy so little cause to like him.

Charles still felt depressed as he rode away towards the col, but his anger had passed. Humphrey would have to take his chance with the rest. No man on earth could protect any other from the flight of a shell or the course of a bullet.