Into the Valley of Death Page 24

  It was a lot harder lying to Sally than it was to her husband. ‘I’d like a word with him, that’s all.’

  She looked wordlessly at him then bent again to her work. ‘I see.’

  A fat black fly landed lazily on her headscarf. He stared at its aimless crawling, afraid to strike so near her head. ‘All right. It’s Doherty I need to talk to. Can I see him?’

  Her fingers stilled a moment, then he felt her teasing out the last stitch. ‘He’s in his own room, they’ll never let you in.’

  ‘Would you ask for me? You’re a nurse, you can get in anywhere.’

  She knelt higher to get to his side, and the fly flew away in irritation. ‘What are you up to, Ryder?’

  Always questions. ‘It’s important, Sal. Can’t you just trust me?’

  She peeled off the dressing round his middle. ‘You know what Jarvis will do if he finds out. Isn’t there enough trouble without you always looking for more?’

  He kept his voice light. ‘I never look for trouble.’

  She glanced up at him, and for a moment he wished he did. ‘No?’ she said, and began working up the scar in his side. ‘Everyone knows you went in at the Alma by yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t. It was a stray bullet, the sar’nt-major knows.’

  ‘This is a bayonet wound,’ she said, snipping another stitch. ‘What did they do, throw it at you?’

  He jerked away from the softness of her touch. ‘I only want to see the bloody colonel. Please, Sally, what harm can it do?’

  ‘With you, I don’t know.’ She brushed away stray cotton and sat back on her heels to study him. ‘You promise it’s nothing against Jarvis?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, stung. ‘I don’t peach. Why would I when he’s bound to find out?’

  ‘I don’t peach either.’ She thought for a second, then stood and slipped her scissors into her pocket. ‘I’ll ask for you. It’ll probably be no but I’ll ask. Get your clothes on and wait here.’ She turned and walked away.

  He dressed quickly, steeling himself for the ‘no’ he knew he’d deserved, but he’d only just got his boots on when she was back.

  ‘He’ll see you,’ she said. ‘But he’s bad, you’ll have to be quick. He needs to sleep.’

  He wouldn’t sleep after what Ryder had to tell him, but it had to be done. He followed Sally through the guarded portal, down a filthy corridor lined with makeshift beds, and saw Syme standing by a bare wooden door. Time swam for a moment as he looked at that seamed and leathery face that hadn’t changed over thirteen years.

  Sally murmured ‘This is Ryder’ but Syme was obviously prepared for the alias. He said, ‘So it is, miss,’ with a flash of humour in his eyes, then opened the door smartly as if to a court-martial. Ryder thanked him gravely and walked in.

  The smell. Familiar at Varna, constant on the Jason, there was no mistaking the stench of diarrhoea. Doherty was clearly aware of it too, and fixed his eyes fiercely on Ryder’s as if he could stop him even seeing the smell. He looked faintly ridiculous in a voluminous white nightshirt, but held himself upright against the grimy pillow and said, ‘Good of you to come, Harry. I was thinking of you.’

  Ryder believed it and was ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. About last time. I acted like a cad.’

  The Old Man smiled. ‘Boy in a temper, that’s all. I was the same at your age.’ His voice was more breath than sound.

  Ryder swallowed. ‘I said I didn’t need your help, sir, but I do. The army does. It’s important.’

  Doherty focussed his eyes as if he were suddenly resuming his uniform. ‘Then sit down and tell me. I’ve nothing better to do.’

  Ryder perched on the edge of the bed and told him. Everything, all of it, as calmly and impersonally as he could. The colonel listened without comment, sipping constantly at a glass of cloudy water, and once batting out a lightning hand to swat away a fly.

  Then he said, ‘You know it’s all supposition, don’t you? You know that?’

  ‘What happened in the ravine …’

  ‘Proves nothing,’ said Doherty. His legs moved restlessly beneath the sheet, and he was obviously in pain. ‘Who’s to say the officer saw your man at all? He heard firing, he got out of it, and jolly sensible too.’

  ‘But the grenades in the trenches. He told the men …’

  ‘Out-of-date information,’ said Doherty. ‘Happens all the time, and you know it.’

  He must be pretty far gone to admit it. ‘I know, sir. I can explain any one of these things – but all of them together? Surely you can see it.’

  Doherty made a sideways chopping movement of his hand. ‘And what if I can? What are we supposed to do? Tell me that, will you, Harry, for I’m damned if I see it myself.’

  Ryder saw how his eyes wandered, how the tip of his tongue kept flicking out to wet his lips, and felt the flatness of failure sinking in his chest. ‘We can warn people.’

  ‘Who?’ said Doherty, and again his body writhed. ‘Tell the men they can’t trust their officers? Tell Lord Raglan he can’t trust his messengers? Destroy the whole wretched army without need of a traitor at all?’ His face spasmed, and he controlled it with an effort.

  It was hopeless, the man was in agony. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ll get Syme.’

  Doherty’s hand flashed out again in the same chopping gesture. ‘No. It’s important. Have to make you understand.’ He eased himself back against the pillow and tried again. ‘Look. If you knew who the beggar was, that’s one thing, hey? Pack him back to England, proper investigation at the right time. But you don’t. We don’t know anything.’

  ‘The saddlecloth. Someone will know.’

  Doherty closed his eyes. ‘Come on, Harry, you used to have a brain in your head. Why do you think those marksmen didn’t shoot him today?’

  ‘Because they knew he was a friend. Because …’ He stopped as he saw it. ‘The saddlecloth. It’s to mark him out.’

  Doherty nodded, still with his eyes shut. ‘Have to be something, wouldn’t there? That’s all the cloth is, just a signal. His own is probably quite different.’

  It had been their only clue. ‘Then all we know is a staff officer on a bay horse.’

  Again the colonel nodded. ‘You really want me to go to Raglan with that?’

  He was in no state to go anywhere. ‘We can’t just do nothing.’

  ‘You must,’ said Doherty, and his eyes snapped open. ‘You must, I want your word.’

  He glanced helplessly at the door. ‘I can’t, sir. I can’t let it happen again.’

  ‘Say it does,’ said Doherty. He reached for the water, but snatched back his hand as another convulsion gripped him. ‘Good officers ignored him at the Alma, they’ll do it again now.’

  Ryder picked up the glass and put it to the pale lips. ‘And if they don’t?’

  Doherty sipped, grimaced, and gestured the glass away. ‘Then a few men die. But if we go into battle with men afraid of their own officers, men refusing the orders that could save them, how many will die then?’

  There was no answer. He put down the glass, stared at its smeared surface, and remembered another just like it a long time ago.

  ‘No one will want to hear it, boy,’ said Doherty, and his breath came in audible little pants. ‘Take this story to anyone else and you’re finished.’ His face was contorting, his voice little more than a croak. ‘I can’t save you. Even if I were fit I couldn’t. I need your word, Harry. You’ll be …’ He hunched forward suddenly and screwed his eyes shut.

  Ryder leaped for the door. Syme took one look at his face and rushed in with Sally straight behind. Ryder hovered helplessly as they eased Doherty back onto the pillows, but Syme threw an agitated look over his shoulder and said, ‘Better go, sir. It’s not doing him any good. Better go.’

  Sally didn’t seem to have noticed the ‘sir’, she was slipping an arm round the shoulders of the colonel of the regiment and feeding him sips of water. Ryder looked at the tortured man whose peace he’d just destroyed, and ba
cked quietly out of the room. He closed the door after him, watching the little vignette of tenderness narrow to a crack then disappear.

  The corridor seemed even dirtier and more chaotic than when he walked in. There was no hope here, no solution for him or for anyone, and all he was doing was making things worse. He walked blindly back towards the main hall, not even seeing the patient figures lining the walls until one stirred and said his name. Woodall, of course, how could he have forgotten? Woodall, huddled on the floor under a filthy blanket, even the bandage round his head black with dirty fingermarks. Ryder dropped to his knees beside him. ‘How is it?’

  Woodall shifted fretfully. ‘Awful. Everything’s filthy. I could die in this rotten place and no one would care.’

  He tried to smile. ‘You’ve only just got here. I expect they’ve still got casualties from yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ muttered Woodall. ‘The ones Claret-Top did for. It’s a proper mess in there, I’ve seen a linesman who’s lost both legs.’

  Ryder remembered what he’d seen in the cart. ‘That’s bloody bad luck.’

  A little fierceness crept into Woodall’s feeble voice. ‘Not luck, it’s that ruddy traitor. I hope they hang him.’

  They’d never even catch him. Ryder looked at Woodall’s haggard face and red-rimmed eyes, and knew the Guard had nearly died for this. So had Oliver, so had Mackenzie, and a ginger-haired private who couldn’t have been older than seventeen was already rotting in a hole at the Alma.

  ‘We will get him, won’t we?’ whispered Woodall, as if in sudden doubt. ‘That’s what you said.’

  Ryder made up his mind. ‘Yes, that’s what I said.’ He struggled to his feet and held out his flask. ‘Keep your pecker up, Woody. I’ll come back when I can.’

  Something startled flitted across the Guard’s face, but he took the flask and said ‘Thanks’ in a ghost of his grand manner. Ryder smiled and walked away. Out down the corridor, out through that hellish main hall, out into the fresh air where he could find some space to think.

  He walked to the waterfront. It had been so beautiful when they first arrived here, sky blue and sparkling in the sun. Now the shore was lined with bell-tents and littered with the carcases of broken boats, while baggage mules and oxen nosed at rickety stacks of boxes outside ramshackle huts. The water was brown with animal filth and debris from the distant fleet, the bay crowded with packed vessels and dominated by a frigate in for repair, its empty masts pointing like jagged fingers at the greying sky. Dusk was already falling, and tomorrow the guns would start.

  He had to do something. They were all at it, Bloomer, Doherty, even Sally, all telling him to keep his head down, leave it alone, but he hadn’t given his word and he had to do something. What, though? Doherty said he’d act if they could identify the man, but the saddlecloth had been their only hope. Bloomer might pick up something, but their best chance had always been the officers, and they were the very people he could never ask. He walked on past the noise and stink of Cattle Wharf, and knew he was praying for a miracle.

  Then he saw him, an officer leading a horse from the path round the headland. The forage cap was lined with red and gold, undress uniform for Staff as well as ADCs, but the greatcoat that concealed his rank was the ordinary muddy grey of the infantry, his horse was grey rather than brown, and the saddlecloth was a regulation blue. And Ryder knew the face. He’d seen it last under a lantern at the Bulganek, when everything had looked dark and this man had changed everything by wishing him good luck.

  He stepped forward and said, ‘Sir.’

  The officer stopped. ‘Hullo, Trooper, how’s the bridge?’

  He remembered. He’d seen Ryder’s stripes had gone, but it hadn’t changed anything, he’d even bothered to stop. He was the first officer Ryder had met who treated men like people, who was interested in their ideas, the first who thought about being an individual in a world of dull and random luck. Doherty had said to tell no one, but if there was a man in this whole mindless army who could help them it was this one.

  ‘Sir, can I talk to you in confidence about something? It’s important.’

  The officer tipped his head on one side. ‘In confidence, Trooper?’ He looked around, then looped his reins over the horse post by the entrance to Cattle Wharf. ‘Well then, we can’t talk here, can we? Let’s find somewhere quieter.’

  Privacy was hard to come by on the waterfront, but not if a forage cap had the right gold band on it. The officer led him past a marine sentry to a row of dilapidated storehouses set back from the quay, pulled open a sagging door, and waved him straight in. ‘I don’t think we’ll be disturbed here, do you?’

  It was unlikely. The boxes piled on the boards had a dusty, forgotten look, despite the urgency of their labels. In a corner lay a heap of opened packs, linen spilling on the floor along with pipes and soap and tragic little pictures in frames, oddments of comfort for men who lay dead at the Alma or toiled in the trenches with nothing but what they stood up in.

  The officer lit a stump of candle in a tin lid, placed it on top of a greenwood box marked PERISHABLE, then pulled the door gently closed.

  ‘Come on then, old man, fire away.’

  It was strange being in the candlelit dark again, as if they were back under the wagon, and Ryder found it surprisingly easy to talk. The officer showed no impatience or incredulity, and his only noticeable reaction came at the description of the saddlecloth, when he gave an admiring little laugh and said, ‘Someone’s got jolly sharp eyes.’ Other than that he was silent.

  Ryder finished and said, ‘That’s it, sir.’ He held his breath for the reaction.

  ‘All right,’ said the officer at last, and Ryder thought he sounded more tense than angry. ‘Tell me – what makes you think this is so urgent now?’

  ‘The bombardment. There’ll be a battle after it, won’t there? And if it’s tomorrow …’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ said the officer. There was a rustling sound as he shifted his weight against the wall. ‘Now how would you know that, I wonder?’

  He couldn’t betray Woodall. ‘I can’t say, sir, but I’m sure. That’s why I went to see the colonel, but he’s too sick to act.’

  The officer nodded. ‘All right. Who else have you told?’

  He had to be careful now. Spreading mutinous talk could get him flogged. ‘No one, sir.’

  The officer smiled. ‘Come now, there must have been someone. A soldier doesn’t speak to his colonel without talking to others first.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Ryder. ‘But I did.’

  The officer laughed and leaned back against the boxes. ‘Do you play chess, Trooper? You’d be uncommon good at it.’

  Not as good as this man was. He’d seen the weakness in the story at once, and would never believe it unless Ryder explained. ‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I don’t get on well with my officers. It’s my fault, I’ve been in trouble, but I can’t expect them to listen to me now.’

  There was a brief silence, then the officer straightened against the wall. ‘I think you’d better tell me, don’t you?’

  The man was friendly, he seemed understanding, but it was still a hell of a risk to criticize one officer to another. ‘Sir, I don’t …’

  The officer sighed, and offered him his flask. ‘See it from my point of view, will you, Ryder? Suppose I stick my neck out over this only to find out you’re a known troublemaker whose word isn’t worth tuppence? If I’m to trust you I need to know it all.’

  No one knew it all. But the drink helped, and he managed at least to talk about Marsh and his own disobedience, about the personal hostility between himself and Jarvis. ‘And you, sir? I don’t even know your name.’

  The officer turned the flask over in his hands. ‘Probably better that way, don’t you think? I doubt the army would approve. Call me “Angelo”, if you like. It seems to have the right conspiratorial ring.’

  His smile was infectious, but this wasn’t a game. ‘You’ll have to tell someone though
, won’t you, sir? If you’re to do anything.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the officer, slipping the flask back in his coat. ‘I’ll have to tell someone. But you need to stay out of it now. Tell no one else.’

  Relief relaxed him even more than the brandy. ‘I won’t, sir. Only the others.’

  The officer looked up. ‘The others?’

  ‘You met them. The Guard, the Highlander, my friend in the 13th.’

  Angelo nodded slowly, and paced back to the boxes. ‘And they’re all investigating? Like you?’

  Ryder woke to the danger. He’d a right to risk his own neck, but no one else’s. ‘I doubt it, sir. They’re very loyal.’

  ‘So are you,’ said Angelo, and Ryder could hear a smile in his voice. ‘But you’re the leading spirit, I’d guess. Without you they’ll let it drop.’

  Ryder knew the diplomatic answer. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I suppose so too,’ said Angelo. ‘It’s just you, really, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just me.’

  Angelo leaned against the boxes and bowed his head. After a moment he said, ‘Will you promise me to do nothing? To sit quiet, say nothing, and leave it to me?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Ryder.

  Angelo looked at him, but this time he didn’t laugh. ‘All right. But you must understand you have more at stake than I do. For an ordinary soldier to involve himself …’

  He stopped abruptly, and then Ryder heard it himself, footsteps slapping smartly towards their door. A voice yelled ‘Oi, you can’t go in there!’ but it was tailing away and the footsteps moved past them towards the road. Angry voices were raised in the distance. Angelo moved to the door, listened, then turned to rest his back against it. ‘He’s gone,’ he said, and smiled like a naughty schoolboy.

  It was impossible not to like him. ‘It could be more dangerous for you, sir. If you’re talking to people, and he hears about it …’

  ‘Oh, I can look after myself,’ said Angelo. He hesitated, then brought something out of his coat, a long, thin object that flashed in the light of the candle. ‘They call it a stiletto in Italy. Look, I’ll …’