Into the Valley of Death Page 11

  At least Doherty had a tent, and the interview could be held in private. Jarvis marched him in, snapped a salute that made his body vibrate like a tuning fork, and bellowed, ‘Prisoner under charge, Corporal Ryder, sir!’ Ryder slammed his thumb into alignment with his overall stripe, fixed his eyes on the splodge in the canvas where the flag would have been, and saluted in the general area of the man seated on a camp stool in front of him.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, ‘Thank you, TSM,’ said the clipped, well-remembered voice. ‘You may stand down now. I’d like to speak to the prisoner alone, if I may.’

  Ryder’s last hope died. He heard Jarvis’s withdrawal and the rustle of the tent flap as it closed behind him, and only then did he lower his eyes to the man on the stool.

  ‘Hullo, Harry,’ said Colonel Doherty. ‘I think it’s time we had a little chat, don’t you?’

  5

  19 September 1854, 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.

  Ryder stood still and tried to keep a grip on reality. It would have been easier out in the open, but the tent shrieked its familiarity with the old world, the Englishman on campaign, everything he thought he’d left behind for ever. Doherty even had a table in front of him with a battered writing desk, two brass candlesticks, and a little ormolu clock that ticked as bravely as if it were in London or Delhi.

  ‘Sit down, won’t you?’ said the colonel. ‘Can’t have a conversation while you’re looming over me like the Wellington Arch.’

  There was only a plywood box labelled HUNTLEY’S BISCUITS, but it seemed no more dreamlike than everything else. He sat and said, ‘I’m not asking for anything, sir.’

  Doherty was rummaging in a bag, and came up with a red face and a bottle of amber liquid. ‘No, but I am, d’you see? So have a drink and maybe you’ll tell me what the dickens you’re doing in my regiment masquerading as a corporal.’

  The drink smelled of whisky and an afternoon he never wanted to live again, but it was a kindness in the circumstances and he managed a small sip.

  Doherty looked doubtfully at his own glass. ‘Awful rotgut, isn’t it? Don’t know what St James is coming to.’ He sat back, swilled the whisky as if to clean his glass with it, and said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your father. Damn shame.’

  Ryder looked directly at him for the first time. The jutting beard was greying now, the hair combed flat into two ragged wings, but it was the same determined jaw and kindly eyes he remembered in the man he’d been brought up to call ‘Uncle Charles’. ‘You don’t believe he actually did what they say, do you, sir? Can you imagine my father cheating at cards?’

  Doherty said gently, ‘I couldn’t imagine him killing himself either.’

  Ryder stared into his glass. ‘He didn’t do it because he was guilty. He did it because he’d lost his job and the means to pay his debts, and because he’d been abandoned by the army that had been his whole life.’

  A trumpet was sounding in the camp outside, calling the picquets to parade. Feet pounded past the tent and distant voices barked familiar orders.

  Doherty shifted on his camp stool. ‘You weren’t there, were you? Burma, I’d heard.’

  Ryder nodded. ‘We couldn’t afford a cavalry commission, I went out as an ensign in the 80th Foot. I got leave after Myat Toon’s stockade and went home to India, but my father was dead when I got there. I found him.’ The sourness of whisky blended with the stench of memory in his mouth, and he had to put the glass down fast. Grass tickled his fingers, and he rubbed them violently against his coat to drive away the ghost of a sensation he knew would be with him till he died.

  Something cracked in the silence, a flicker of light, and Doherty touched a lucifer to the candle in the second stick. ‘Servants? Surely someone … ?’

  The phosphorus smell was overwhelming in the confines of the tent, but Ryder welcomed it for driving out the other. ‘Only the butler. He’d let the rest go. I had to sell my commission to pay the creditors, along with the house and furniture and everything else. And there was Ramesh, of course, I had to see him provided for.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Doherty drily, and blew out the match. ‘But yourself? Why didn’t you take a commission with the Indian Army? You don’t need money for that.’

  He almost smiled. ‘I needed a respectable background and a father who hadn’t been thrown out of his regiment. I worked my passage to England and enlisted there instead. It’s all I know, sir. Horses – and the army.’

  Doherty nodded. ‘But why the 13th, hey? Even with that ridiculous name I was bound to spot you in the end.’

  ‘It was listed under Colonel Lygon, I didn’t know until it was too late. Even then I thought it was safe.’ He deliberately kept his voice light. ‘Who bothers to look closely at a private soldier?’

  ‘I do if he insists on drawing attention to himself,’ said Doherty. ‘I spotted you on yesterday’s patrol.’

  He suppressed the jolt of panic. ‘Did you tell anyone, sir?’ If Marsh knew it would be round the troop in a week. Fisk, Jordan, Prosser and Moody, they’d all know him for what he was, the gentleman serving in the ranks, the butt for anything they chose to throw at him. And as for Jarvis …

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Doherty. ‘But you should have foreseen it, Harry. You’ve not changed that much, and of course you’re the image of your father.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully and studied Ryder’s face. ‘But are you like him in other ways, hey? That’s the question.’

  Ryder stayed wooden under the examination. ‘Sir?’

  The colonel leaned back on his stool. ‘This disobeying orders, causing trouble, all this would be anathema to your father. He loved the army.’

  He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘And look what it did to him.’

  ‘What some men did, perhaps,’ said Doherty. ‘But it’s still the same army he loved, and it’s still the finest in the world.’

  ‘It could be. If the men were treated properly, if our commanders knew what they …’ He brought himself up sharp. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  Doherty gave a gentle wave of his hand, dispelling the outside world, keeping him in Meerut yarning over a chota peg with Uncle Charles. ‘No need. We all know Lord Raglan’s an old man. Splendid gentleman, of course, but all he knows is Waterloo and what the Great Duke would have done. He will keep calling the enemy “the French”.’ He frowned briefly at his whisky glass, then cleared his throat loudly. ‘But he’s trying, my boy, he knows we need to adapt. He said the men needn’t shave, didn’t he, hey? Said they needn’t wear their stocks.’

  He thought of the man named Bloomer. ‘The Light Division still wear them.’

  Doherty grimaced. ‘Sir George Brown goes his own way. So do half the others, and Lord Raglan’s far too much the gentleman to damn their eyes and make them do as they’re told. But he’s not getting the support, d’you see, boy, not from them or Whitehall. Not enough money, not enough anything, and the whole commissariat riddled with incompetence. It’s not so very different from India, Harry, you’ll see.’ His fingers were drumming angrily on the table.

  For a moment Ryder glimpsed the Old Man’s own frustration, the hand-to-mouth existence of a cavalry regiment on campaign. ‘Then why are we here, sir? If Whitehall doesn’t care? Don’t tell me anyone really gives a hang about the Turks.’

  Doherty grunted. ‘Oh, I expect the Queen does, women are incurably sentimental. But we can’t have the Tsar thinking we’re back in the Crusades, can we, hey? Wanting to boot the heathens out of Jerusalem?’

  He remembered Varna, the brutal way the Turks had treated the conquered Bulgarians. ‘But what’s it to do with us? We’re not a police force for the world.’

  The colonel didn’t laugh. ‘Someone has to be. But it’s part of the Great Game, boy, the same old shadow fight with Russia, and this time we really do have to fight her. Let her get away with this, then next thing it’s Afghanistan, and after that India. She has to be stopped.’

  Ryder looked at the clock. �
��The Great Game’, Doherty called it, but in the next few hours men were going to be dying for it. He said dully, ‘Well then, I suppose we’ll stop her.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Doherty, brooding over his empty glass. ‘If we’re in time.’

  Doubt. The forbidden thing, the always unspoken thing, the Old Man was saying it openly and Ryder felt jolted inside. ‘In time?’

  Doherty made an impatient gesture that almost swept his glass from the table. ‘What do you think this is all about, hey? That patrol yesterday, burning the villages, that foolishness today at the river? They’re trying to delay us, boy. They’re not ready. If we let them dig in at the Alma they could hold us for weeks, and by the time we get to Sebastopol it’ll be a fortress. We’ve got to smash through them tomorrow, and not stop for anything until we take that damn port and the job’s done.’

  Instead of which they’d sat for five days on the beach. ‘You’re right, sir. What we need is speed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Doherty simply. He rubbed his hands over his face, then sat upright at the table. ‘Speed – and the obedience of our soldiers.’

  Ryder understood. He picked up his glass, placed it on the table, and moved to stand.

  ‘No, no,’ said Doherty, flapping his hand irritably. ‘You’re still Nick Standish’s son and I’ll help you if I can. Just tell me exactly what happened.’

  The story seemed childish in his own ears now he was forced to put it into words. He heard himself say, ‘I would have asked the cornet, but he was too far ahead.’ He heard himself say, ‘I heard the TSM, but he couldn’t have seen what state the men were in.’ He was damning himself with each and every word, and was soldier enough to know it.

  ‘All right,’ said Doherty when he finished. ‘I understand. You thought you knew better than the sergeant-major, so you disobeyed his order. And that’s why you’re here.’

  Ryder was confused. ‘I thought Lord Cardigan …’

  Doherty snorted, a splendidly explosive sound in the small space. ‘Leave his lordship to me. I shall explain you were absent on other duties and behaved very properly when you saw our situation. I can help you that much.’

  Ryder sat forward. ‘Then I’m clear.’

  Doherty sighed. ‘No. Because of what you did with the water.’

  It was unbelievable. ‘Men were dying, sir. We were having to leave them behind. How could I –’

  Doherty’s hand flicked up for silence. ‘Yes, yes, it was a damn fine thing you did, and a few of the infantry officers have said the same. The cornet even says he’d have given you permission if you’d asked – but you didn’t, d’you see? The sergeant-major did quite right in the circumstances and enforced the cornet’s last known order, which was to make all speed to rejoin the regiment. And you disobeyed him, Harry. You disobeyed a direct order.’

  Ryder stared hard at his boots. Should men be allowed to drop and die in their ranks because their officers didn’t know what they were doing?

  ‘And it’s not the first time, is it?’ said Doherty. ‘The TSM’s authority has to be upheld, so I’m going to let him have your stripes.’

  His stripes. The one thing the army had given him, the one single thing that separated him from the lowest, newest member of the whole damn army. ‘But that’s unfair.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Doherty sadly. ‘No man can wear the Queen’s stripes if he won’t obey her orders. You know that, Harry, or you should do.’

  The Old Man’s face was implacable, and Ryder forced himself to silence. The ticking of the ormolu clock seemed suddenly unbearably loud, a reminder of a whole world lost.

  Doherty gave a tiny grunt. ‘Oh, I can see how hard it is, boy, of course I can. You’re an officer, born and trained to it, and it’s hard to take orders from an NCO. But if you can’t do it then there’s no place for you here. I’ll get you your discharge and a passage home.’

  Back to England. A job as a clerk, perhaps, sitting in a dusty room with a quill pen, and taking orders from someone he respected even less than Jarvis. ‘No, sir. Thank you, but I’ll stay.’

  Doherty nodded. ‘Then you must do it properly. No more acting on your own initiative. No more disobedience. Not a foot out of line anywhere, do you understand? Not one.’

  Be a good little soldier, say ‘yes, sir’, ‘no, sir’ to every single stupid order he was given. He closed his eyes and said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ said Doherty. ‘There’s no need for a parade, just take the stripes off yourself and I’ll call it good enough. But make your peace with the TSM, will you, for all our sakes? He’s a good soldier, excellent record, twenty years with the regiment. You’d like him if you were his officer.’

  Instead of a nobody under his command. Ryder stood without a word and awaited his dismissal.

  Doherty stood too. ‘All right, then. I’ll write to Cardigan, I’ll talk to Marsh and Jarvis, but remember I won’t be able to help you a second time.’

  Ryder stiffened. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to.’

  Doherty tilted his head to one side and regarded him steadily. Then he said, ‘I’ll keep your secret, Harry. I’ll tell Marsh you’re only a slight acquaintance,’ and held out his hand.

  Ryder stepped back and saluted. ‘Dismiss, sir?’

  For a moment Doherty looked what he was, a tired old man on the eve of a battle. Then he dropped his hand and said, ‘Yes, dismiss. You’ll understand one day, and when you do we’ll talk again. But for your father’s sake I hope it’s soon.’

  Ryder didn’t. For a little while Doherty had taken him back, reminded him of a world he used to be part of, but when he ducked out through the tent flap he was back in the one he had to exist in now. ‘Out the way, Corporal,’ said a young lieutenant bustling importantly up to the tent. ‘Hop it back to your unit.’

  Maybe he would if he had one, but he looked out over the whole grand army camped by the Bulganek and knew there wasn’t a place in it anywhere a man like himself could belong.

  Woodall joined the others jostling at the muddy river. He didn’t fancy it in the slightest, but if he didn’t pretend to fill his barrel like everyone else he’d never get a drink. His canteen was already full of clean well-water, but how could he touch it in front of the others when he’d already told Truman he had none?

  ‘Bloody typical,’ said ‘Nasty’ Parsons, sluicing water down his face and disgusting neck. ‘Cavalry camping right on the river, and the rest of us chucked to the outside to protect them. That’s what they get for being Raglan’s pets.’

  ‘They’re not all bastards, mind,’ said Jones, a soft-spoken ass Woodall secretly suspected of being Welsh. ‘That Lilywhite today, he gave me a drink of his own barrel. Here, he knew you, Woodall, knew your name. Friend of yours, is it?’

  He was going to say ‘yes’, but the stifled sniggering warned him in time. ‘I know him, Jones. What of it?’

  ‘Nothing, your lordship,’ said Jones, grinning. ‘I thought it wasn’t likely.’

  More giggling, like a pack of beastly street urchins. Woodall reached the stream, and stooped to skim the barrel delicately across the surface as if to avoid the muck swirling up from the bottom.

  ‘Oh, give it here, for Gawd’s sake,’ said Truman, grabbing rudely at the barrel. ‘Scoop now, filter after, we’ll be here all …’ He stopped, looked at the canteen, and shook it. The tell-tale swishing seemed suddenly louder than the river.

  ‘Give that back,’ said Woodall, reaching frantically. ‘Get your filthy paws off, that’s mine.’

  ‘Have it,’ said Truman, turning him a face hardened into brown stone. ‘I wouldn’t touch it to save my life.’ He swung round to the others and waved the canteen aloft. ‘Look here, boys, Woodall’s been carrying clean water all day. Teddy Lloyd fainted from thirst right beside us, and look here!’

  ‘It’s river water,’ panted Woodall. ‘River, same as yours.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Truman, and tilted it so everyone could see the clear water that gushed down into the muddy
Bulganek. Men’s voices hushed to silence on the bank. Someone whispered ‘Gawd’.

  Truman nodded grimly and shoved it back at Woodall. ‘Here, take it. Wouldn’t want to waste any more, would we? Not when it’s yours.’

  Woodall snatched it to his chest and scrambled back from the bank, stumbling away blindly over the grass. He would have given Lloyd water, it was Truman who’d said they’d got none and how could he deny it? It was Truman’s fault anyway for trying to scrounge off him in the first place. It wasn’t a crime not to spend his evening in stupid vulgar talk, but to walk alone to a village and sensibly get water for the morning. Why should he have shared it with Truman?

  He was far enough away now. No one could see him as his knees sagged and he knelt helplessly in the muddy grass. He thought of his trousers and how he’d have to clean them before he slept, he thought of how the men would look when he faced them in the morning, and most of all he thought of Maisie and of home. Not that awful barracks, but real home, those two little rooms in Goodge Street, and Maisie seated at the upright, playing ‘Woodman, Spare that Tree’ with the lamplight on her face.

  Another picture flitted over it, a candle flame flickering on brightly coloured cards and on the hands of the men who played them. He thought of the wide eyes of a fair-haired cavalryman who bounced with excitement as he said ‘That’s game, Woodall, that’s game!’ He thought of the slow, easy smile of a young Highlander who teased him in a way that seemed to mean something like liking. He thought of a dark-haired light dragoon slewed halfway off his saddle to hold out a canteen, saying ‘Take it, take it, man, it’s water’, smiling and holding out his hand.

  He had nothing to reach out with, nothing to give. When he looked up there was nothing to see but his own regiment hurrying back to their wretched bivouac with an eagerness that puzzled him until he saw the queues forming for the rum casks. There was no comfort there. No slaughtering tonight, and no new rations while the baggage train stayed in its own encampment. The plain was bare of trees, not even a stick to make a fire.