The Street Philosopher Read online

  After a few seconds’ further contemplation, the senior correspondent let out an exclamation and pointed down at the redoubts. Kitson sat up. Turkish troops were removing the bodies of their slain comrades from the crude defensive structures, piling them up outside the walls like rolls of tattered, bloody cloth.

  ‘Our Turkish allies,’ Kitson said. ‘I hear that they suffered heavy casualties resisting the Russian advance, before the British forces had turned out. Their sacrifice is worthy of mention, Mr Cracknell, do you not think?’

  ‘Codswallop,’ proclaimed Cracknell forcefully. ‘The heathen dogs let two forts fall. Their cowardice damn near cost us the day. But I wasn’t looking at them.’ He tapped Kitson’s arm, and then pointed again. ‘Highlanders, man. Sir Colin Campbell and his ADC.’

  The two officers from the Highland Brigade, in their kilts of dark green tartan and their black feather bonnets, weren’t difficult to locate. They stood to one side of the redoubt, in conversation with an upright, bearded civilian in a long blue frock-coat, a peaked cap and highly polished riding boots.

  ‘Russell of the Times,’ Cracknell growled. ‘My great rival. Ingratiating himself as usual. The slimy toad–I’ll bet he saw everything.’ The Courier team, delayed by the unexplained absence of their senior, had arrived in the valley some time after the final shot had been fired, and had been obliged to rely on eye-witnesses for their information on the battle itself. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go down there, have a jaw with Billy Russell and those two bonnie Scotsmen, and see what more I can learn about the action. You stay here and brush up what we’ve got so far.’

  Kitson jotted a note in his pocketbook. ‘What of Styles?’ he asked wearily. ‘It has been some time since he left for the valley floor.’

  ‘What? Oh yes–don’t want him collapsing again, do we, with neither of us around to prop him up!’ Cracknell chuckled wickedly. ‘Very well–you find the boy then. I want you to keep up your watch on Mr Styles for me, Thomas. The lad’s is a little soft in the head, I think. He’ll need some careful supervision during the trials to come, you mark my words.’

  Kitson watched as the senior correspondent trotted off towards the redoubt, shouting a robust ‘hallo’ to Russell and the Highlanders. That he could make such avuncular pronouncements with every appearance of sincerity was remarkable. In the month since the clash at the Alma, his treatment of Styles had been consistently, characteristically merciless, both with regards to the events of that day and the enduring issue of Madeleine Boyce. It was this unrelenting mockery, Kitson suspected, that was driving Styles to seek more and more time alone.

  Cracknell reached the Times’ correspondent and his companions, who greeted him with obvious reluctance. Kitson turned and headed down into the valley. He followed a narrow, winding footpath, cut deep into the grass by centuries of passage by Tartar shepherds. The hills around him were smooth and treeless, and dotted with pale rocks. In the distance, beyond the wide plateau that held the main Allied camps, the location of Sebastopol and its fortifications was marked by a few winding trails of grey smoke. To the left, off between two steep green spurs, was the dark ribbon of the sea.

  Slowly, the slope began to level out, and Kitson passed through a large, abandoned vineyard. It was yet another corner of the fecund peninsula rendered barren by the invasion, yellow dust caking the withered, trampled vines. As he picked his way towards the valley floor, the arid furrows became littered with the detritus of a recent battle. A beaten-in dragoon’s helmet told him that this was where Brigadier-General Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade had repelled the Russian cavalry, just after the struggle for the redoubts. Scraps of uniform from both armies had been sown into the vineyard by hundreds of stamping hooves, and sabre-shards winked like flints in the crumbling earth. Pushing aside a screen of ragged, browning leaves, Kitson saw a hand, severed just below the wrist, lying on the ground before him. White as soap, it was frozen in a loose pointing gesture, with a silver wedding band on the ring finger. Averting his gaze, he hurried on.

  Styles was sitting atop a boulder in plain sight, as close to the battlefield as was safe. He was hunched over his paper, hard at work in the soft evening light, a battered cap of uncertain provenance pushed back on his head. Without speaking, Kitson approached, and peered over to see Styles’ subject. The drawing in his lap depicted one of the many dead chargers laid out on the bed of the valley. This horse had been gutted by a cannonball, its entrails entirely gone, the carcass lying darkly hollow like an empty shell.

  Kitson sighed, leaning up against the boulder and crossing his arms. This grisly scene was becoming typical of Styles’ productions. Only one of his drawings, in fact, depicting the battlefield of the Alma, had so far been engraved for the Courier; since that day, the illustrator had been exposing himself to the most distressing sights that the war had to offer, dwelling upon them at unhealthy length. The resulting images were nightmarish, and completely unusable.

  ‘Do you really imagine that the Courier will run that?’ Kitson asked. Despite his best efforts, he could not keep the impatience from his voice.

  Styles stopped drawing. He did not reply.

  ‘I realise what you are attempting,’ Kitson went on, ‘truly I do. And as ever, your great skill is evident. But you must realise that no magazine in England would print such an image.’

  The illustrator turned towards him sharply. ‘I am only doing what we came out here for, Kitson,’ he snapped. ‘To see war for what it is. Or have you forgotten?’

  I have lost his confidence, Kitson thought. For some reason, he considers us to be adversaries. How had this happened? He uncrossed his arms and put his hands in his pockets, feeling suddenly ashamed, wondering how he could repair the damage that had plainly been done.

  Styles stared out at the valley. ‘Do you know what happened yet?’

  Kitson brushed a fat autumnal fly from the shoulder of his jacket, trying as he did so to keep his eyes off the slaughter. The light breeze carried over a revolting, fleshy stench, already tainted with putrefaction. Over at the foot of the Causeway Heights, privates from the Highland Brigade were burying fallen hussars. Still clad in their magnificent uniforms, the bodies were being swung into deep pits, their brocaded sleeves flapping behind them as they plummeted to their graves.

  ‘As far as we can deduce,’ he said quietly, ‘Cardigan’s men were supposed to charge the contested redoubts up on the Heights, but went head-on for the Russian artillery instead. God only knows why.’

  ‘So it was a mistake. Not even an ordinary defeat. All this death for the sake of a–a blunder.’ Styles’ voice grew bitterly angry. ‘They will try to disguise what happened here, you know. They will try to dress it up in the garb of heroism–make it acceptable, admirable even. I must stand against this in my work, Kitson, do you not see? I must show the truth.’

  ‘I do understand that, Styles, believe me, but—’

  ‘Then keep to your business,’ he interrupted, ‘and allow me to keep to mine.’

  Frowning, Kitson glanced away. How could he challenge this? Revelation of the truth of warfare, as he had declared himself on many previous occasions, was the cornerstone of the Courier’s presence in the Crimea. Yet for some reason it made him profoundly uncomfortable to hear this from Styles now. This same commitment fuelled Cracknell’s grandiloquent rage, spurring the senior correspondent on to ever more scathing condemnation of the British commanders; in the young illustrator, however, it seemed to be fostering only a dark and violent melancholy.

  ‘Come, Robert,’ Kitson said after a while, adopting a conciliatory tone. ‘We must not quarrel. God knows, this land needs no more ill-feeling in it. We are friends, are we not?’

  Styles had resumed work on his sketch, the pencil scratching busily as it transcribed the charger’s mangled remains. ‘Yes,’ he said after a pause, his voice low and a little strained, ‘we are friends.’

  2

  The brushwood on Inkerman Ridge was thick and almost waist high. Ma
jor Maynard fought his way through, muttering curses as brambles and twigs scratched against his legs. He was holding a tin mug of steaming broth up in the air, in the hope of keeping it stable, but the uneven, slippery mud beneath the tangle of bushes was causing him to stumble frequently. Hot liquid splashed over his hands, making the chilled flesh smart and tingle.

  Private Cregg followed about five yards behind him, cheeks ruddy from rum-and-water, with his minié rifle ready in his hands. Maynard knew that this was not necessarily a man to be relied upon. He could tell that Cregg was one of those who had fled to the service to escape the law, joining Her Majesty’s Army in order to avoid being dangled from the gallows. The scoundrel was famous for his insubordination, and was regularly flogged for it; but the Major had noticed that Cregg treated him, and him alone, with a certain gruff deference. Above all else, Maynard believed in giving every man under his command the chance to prove his worth. So this was it–he was giving Private Cregg his chance.

  Finally, they reached the battery. Maynard set the mug down and caught his breath. Lifting a fist to his mouth, he licked the warm broth off his knuckles and looked about him in the early morning half-light. The battery, built in haste as soon as the Allies had arrived on the Heights around Sebastopol, had since been abandoned as it stood too far forward of the rest of the line. It was large, constructed from sandbags and wire gabions filled with white rocks, and had two gun emplacements, designed for Lancasters from the look of them, both now empty.

  The Allied positions were already lost in the fog behind them. All he could make out was the battery itself and a small grey ring of the wasteland around it. It was as if they were enclosed in an opaque, smoky bubble, lost to the rest of the ridge. The gloom was quite overpowering. Everything was thoroughly soaked by the drizzling rain that had been falling now for thirty-six straight hours. Maynard took out his watch. There was just enough light for him to see the hands against the white face; it was shortly before five. He put the watch back in his coat and picked up the mug, pressing his hands around it and inhaling the broth’s thin aroma. With some effort, he resisted raising it to his lips, and instead began to walk slowly around the battery’s perimeter.

  ‘Hello?’ he called, trying to keep his voice clear and confident. ‘Hello, are you there?’

  There was no reply, but he knew what he’d seen. He’d been standing in the forward pickets of the Second Division, talking to Major Hendricks of the 55th, a fellow India man and an old friend. The wind coming in from the Black Sea had shifted the fog slightly, affording him a brief glimpse of the abandoned battery. There, close to the dark mass of sandbags, had been a solitary figure in a cap and a long coat. It had been exposed for just a second before the fog engulfed it once more. Hendricks had laughingly declined to go with him to investigate, and advised him to ready his revolver. The Russians were getting increasingly cunning, he’d said, and audacious as well; their scouts and spies were often seen nosing around the old Sandbag Battery. Undeterred, Maynard had beckoned Cregg to his side, and then set out.

  There was a scuffling sound somewhere to his rear. He turned to see Cregg hauling himself on to the battery wall, his charcoal greatcoat falling open to reveal the red tunic beneath, worn to the colour of cured beef by the months of hard campaigning. Once up there, the private adopted a crouched sharpshooter’s pose, looking about him keenly as if searching for targets.

  ‘Major,’ he hissed urgently, ‘what we after, exactly? This bloke you saw–’ e can’t very well be one of our own, can ’e? What would ’e be doin’ out ’ere, all by ’isself?’

  ‘I believe that I recognised him, Cregg. A fellow from the London Courier magazine.’

  Cregg’s eyes, glinting beadily under the brim of his shako, stayed on the mists. ‘You mean the paddy, Major? Fat cove–big black beard? Likes the sound of ’is own voice? I seen you with ’im at the Alma–chum o’ yours, ain’t ’e?’

  Maynard could not help but smile at this vivid description. ‘As much as anyone is,’ he replied. ‘Mr Cracknell and I are acquainted, but I would hesitate before claiming any more than that. I’m quite sure that he would jettison me in a moment if he believed it to be in his best interests–or should I say in the best interests of his work.’ He continued his search, peering into the darkest recesses of the battery. They were quite empty. ‘It was not him I saw, though–rather a member of his team. An illustrator.’

  Now Cregg looked down at him, his face twisted into an uncomprehending sneer. ‘What, like an artist, what draws an’ that? Why would ’e be out ’ere?’

  This was the nub of it. Maynard was but a humble soldier, a career man, not so very different from the scrawny chap up there on the battery. He stood well apart from the grand lords and refined gentlemen who deigned to wear the uniform, and he could not for a moment claim to understand the niceties of art. But even he could tell that it was not a morning for making illustrations.

  ‘Indeed, Cregg.’ Maynard completed his circuit. ‘Well, there is certainly no one here now. A little mystery we shall not be able to solve, I fear.’ He glanced down at the broth that sloshed blackly within the mug, and thought that he might get to drink it after all.

  ‘Major!’ said Cregg sharply, suddenly tensing. ‘Major, what’s that noise?’

  For a second Maynard had no idea what the private was talking about. Thus far, the night had been a deathly quiet one, as if the fog was muffling sound as well as obscuring sight. But then, away down the steep slope in front of the battery, he heard the faint creaking of cartwheels bouncing down an uneven road; the chink of metal, and the clump of boots; and, distant but quite clear, the murmuring of hundreds of voices, speaking in a thick alien tongue.

  ‘That’s–that’s bleedin’ Russian, that is! The bastards are gettin’ ready to attack us!’ The private scrabbled down from the battery.

  ‘Calm yourself, man,’ Maynard instructed firmly. ‘It is but traffic on the road into Sebastopol. Major Hendricks was telling me of this shortly before we left the pickets. It runs along the base of the Chernaya valley. All quite routine.’

  This served to confuse the soldier rather than reassure him. ‘Supply road? But ’ow are they ever goin’ to give it up, if they’re gettin’ new supplies?’

  Maynard had no answer. Cregg was right: the campaign could not come to any sort of an end at present. The sad, simple truth was that the Allies lacked the troops to encircle the city properly, and their forces dwindled a little further with every passing day. Maynard’s fear, shared by a growing number of officers, was that the inexplicable delay in mounting an assault on Sebastopol had cost them a quick victory, and that the already ailing army was now doomed to face a Crimean winter.

  ‘You would be well advised to leave such matters to your superiors, Cregg,’ he said. ‘Now get yourself back to the line. Mrs Boyce and her friend should still be there with their cauldron of hot broth. I think you’ve earned yourself a cup.’

  Cregg saluted and hurried off, plainly glad to be putting some ground between himself and the Sandbag Battery. Maynard turned back to the slope, lifted the mug and took a sip of broth. It was weak and bitter, and now only lukewarm; but he drank the rest down anyway, murmuring thanks to Mrs Boyce once he had finished. He had been most impressed to see her at the pickets, braving the cold and gloom in order to perform such an honest, valuable service for the sentries. Now there, he’d thought, is a person with a proper sense of duty–more than could be said for her damned husband.

  Boyce had been appointed to make the two o’clock tour of the line, a responsibility assigned to a different infantry colonel every night for the past three weeks. He had failed to appear, however, leaving Major Maynard no option but to perform this task for him, instead of retreating to his cot for some much-needed rest. No word had been sent, but Maynard knew that the Colonel (as he now was, having recently received an entirely undeserved promotion) had dined in the hut of some senior artillery officers half a mile back from the line. Obviously the attracti
ons of a well-stocked table, and a sufficiently elevated company, had proved too compelling to leave. The Major had been angry, but not particularly surprised. It was hardly the first time Boyce had behaved in this manner.

  Before heading back himself, Maynard decided on another circuit of the battery, to make a final check for any irregularities. As he trudged around its front, the dew from the coarse grass washing the mud from his boots, his brow slowly creased with gathering consternation. He wished that Hendricks, who had more experience of this portion of the line, had agreed to come out to the battery with him. The volume of noise rising up from the Chernaya valley seemed great indeed, and was growing by the second. Surely this could not be normal. Suddenly, there was a fresh clamour of Russian voices, shouting as if for order, mingled with the sound of rapidly turning wheels. These were not now the wheels of the Sebastopol supply train, of lumbering ox-carts loaded with flour, milk, or gunpowder, but something altogether lighter and faster, like small carriages or broughams–or pieces of field artillery.

  Maynard swallowed, listening hard. This surely warranted an urgent report to Brigadier-General Pennefather of the Second Division. Pennefather might well laugh at him, and call him a lily-livered poltroon; or he might curse and castigate him for raising an unnecessary alarm, and bid him return post-haste to his own section of the line, where he knew what was what.

  So be it. Maynard started to walk back in the direction of the pickets, lifting his boots up high in order to move through the mud and brushwood as quickly as he could. After half a dozen paces, he started to run.