The Street Philosopher (37 page)

Two signal rockets raced upwards side by side, the white plumes climbing fast through the soft peach of the morning sky. The eleven colonels, in their different parts of the line, watched them disbelievingly. This was without doubt the signal for the attack, but the black and green triangle of the Russian flag could clearly be seen flying above the Malakhoff Tower. Its guns still fired on the French, and large numbers of infantry still clashed around it, rushing back and forth between the Russian earthworks, scrambling to form firing lines and battling bloodily in the trenches. The basic condition for their assault had not been met–yet there, hanging above them like a pair of great comets, was the plain instruction to proceed nonetheless.

Every one of the colonels knew, however, that it was not their place to question the decisions of the High Command. They swallowed hard, finishing off their interrupted prayers and drawing pistols and swords. Some took out their service whistles, and sounded shrill notes over the bellowing of the guns. Others simply started up the shout.

The men of the line stood, wiping their sweaty faces, waiting for that final torturous second, knowing for certain that their time had arrived, that the dreaded order had been given; and then, urged on by their sergeants, they pitched forward. The crumbling, sun-baked trenches quickly robbed the attack of its order, and the soldiers of the Forlorn Hope emerged in twos and threes, scrabbling out of the disintegrating works,
floundering desperately as they tried to rise to their feet and ready their miniés. In place of ordered ranks of redcoats, thousands strong, marching unstoppably onwards, were a few hundred confused and dusty men, wandering about in the last pools of low mist, looking for fellows and officers still stuck in the earth behind them.

Lieutenant Nunn drew himself up and considered the Great Redan. It was a formidable sight, the sloping ‘v’ of its façade sitting beside the ruined suburbs of Sebastopol like the crude visor from some gigantic medieval jousting helmet. It appeared to be entirely unscathed by the previous day’s bombardment, the cruel point of its salient sharp and intact, the smooth earth of its sides interrupted only by the square holes of gun emplacements. The ramparts were high and heavily manned. It seemed, from the open ground before the Quarries, to be utterly unassailable.

Striding through the shapeless mass of soldiers, Nunn shouted for a sergeant to bring the companies into line. Before anything could be done, however, a row of bright points flashed along the front of the Redan as a number of its guns fired together; and much of the ragged Forlorn Hope was wiped clean away. Back at the trenches, scores were struck before they even had a chance to stand upright, collapsing amidst splintered pickets or being flung backwards on to those assembling behind them. Dazed by the noise, Nunn found himself to be surrounded by the wounded and dismembered. A moment later, as their initial shock turned to blind panic, these men started to howl piteously–their cries drowned out almost immediately by another round of cannon-fire from the Redan.

Nunn walked further forward, repeating his order as loudly as he could. No one heeded him; the only NCOs he encountered were dead. To his great relief, he came across a captain from the 7th Fusiliers, a short man with a downy moustache.

‘What should we do, sir?’ Nunn cried.

The captain’s lips moved and one of his arms waved about emphatically, but Nunn couldn’t hear a thing. His ears were filled with a thick, thunderous sound, as if he were standing
beneath a mighty waterfall. Then the captain stopped speaking with a sudden jerk, his face changing, his gesticulating arm falling down. He had been struck heavily in the lower midriff, and was losing blood by the pint. Eyes rolling back, the officer slumped to the earth.

Through the storm of shrapnel, grape and rifle fire, Nunn saw that a large group from the Light had managed to get out all at once in front of the Quarries, and were assembling about twenty yards from the British line. The last vestiges of the Division’s first wave, its Forlorn Hope, were falling in with them. A proper forming-up was proving impossible, however, as the troubled mass of men shifted constantly, none of them wanting to be left exposed at the front or sides. They were like a shoal of crimson fishes being menaced by unseen sharks. Every moment, these rapid, invisible predators would swoop in from the mingled clouds of smoke, mist and dust to claim a few more of their number.

Without thinking, Nunn sprinted over, a ricochet whining by his boot. Colonel Yea, his monocle in place, strode up to them, stepping over bodies, yelling for order, for a disciplined retreat to the trenches. ‘Bugler!’ he screamed, looking around him. ‘This will never do! Where’s the bloody bugler to call them back?
Bugler
, damn it!’

Quickly seeing that there was no option but to advance, the brave Colonel paced before the group, directing them to form up, gesturing to the fort ahead, his ruddy face composed, his jaw jutting out defiantly. Nunn understood immediately that it was to be a rush for the batteries, a splendid, dauntless charge; but Yea had not covered more than ten yards with his loping, long-legged gait before he was caught in a tight stream of grapeshot, which whipped his mangled body around in a grotesque twirl before letting it fall before those he led.

All resolution left the men at this sight. Some came to an uncertain halt, and were hit themselves in the seconds that followed. Others headed back over the killing ground towards the trenches, deciding to take their chances against the Russian cannon-fire, or dashed for what shelter there was nearby, ducking down into low hollows, hiding themselves
behind rocks, banks of earth and even the bodies of their comrades.

As Nunn was making for a wide, shallow crater, he noticed a figure hunched behind a pile of split sandbags. The fellow was dressed in a green jacket but was plainly no rifleman; he was filthy, stick thin and wearing a ragged assembly of other clothing that did not belong in any military uniform. He had a revolver, which he lifted above the sandbags and fired, without aiming, towards the Redan. All six bullets were let off in less than ten seconds, the pistol leaping around crazily at the end of this shooter’s spindly arm. Amazed, Nunn shouted at him to get back, but could not even hear his own voice.

A cloud of dust passed over him, blocking his view of this person; instead, on his other side, he saw some privates from the 99th, the scoundrel Cregg and a couple of others, scurrying to the British line. He called them over, and ordered them to fall in behind him. Suddenly he could see the man in the green jacket again. He had been joined by two more civilians. One was trying to get his attention, but was being ignored as far as Nunn could tell. The other was Richard Cracknell, the lusty blackguard from Cregg’s odious drawings–the rank perverter of the inestimably fine Madeleine Boyce. The Lieutenant started angrily towards him.

The shell-blast was massive and very close. It sent shrapnel ripping into the sandbags and knocked the approaching group of soldiers to the ground in a bloody haze. The large form of their officer landed heavily at Kitson’s feet. The explosion had blown the forage cap clean off his head, along with a good deal of his hair. He was quite still, one of his eyes half-open. Kitson glanced at the others. Two of the three privates were unquestionably dead; the third was covered in blood and thrashing around, his mouth forming agonised, unheard obscenities. Those who shouted, as Kitson had been told many times on the quay at Balaclava, could usually be left until last. He went to the officer, a young lieutenant. Moving around behind the stricken man’s shoulders, Kitson lifted the man’s head gently, and set it in his lap. He could feel
the fracture in the skull–two sections of bone sitting at slightly different levels, with a sharp, indented line running between them. Taking a thick roll of Mrs Seacole’s bandages from his pocket, he set to work.

In the corner of his vision, Kitson noticed that Styles was chancing a look over at the Russian lines. The illustrator had met him with a confused expression, at once defiant and irritated and deeply, profoundly frightened. There had also been the smallest trace of relief, Kitson thought, at seeing him again; but his refusal to go back to safety had been absolute. Styles was set on seeing this mission of his through to its conclusion, whatever that might prove to be. Left in the Crimea, his delusions had clearly grown ever more acute. Had Cracknell known he was still there, or had he simply failed to notice it? Either way, it was a shameful piece of neglect.

He glanced at his former senior. Cracknell sat hunched down behind the sandbags with his arms crossed tightly in front of him, staring at the ground. No pocketbook was balanced on his knee; no cigarette was stuck in his mouth. Kitson had noticed this distraction back in the advance parallel, when Cracknell had caught up with him in the seconds before the attack had begun. Something had happened to him in the minutes since their reunion. Before he could ask what it was, though, they had seen Styles limping out after the first line and set off after him. Cracknell had been as eager as Kitson to start this pursuit. His wish, however, had plainly been to get out of the British works rather than to rescue the errant illustrator.

The cannon-fire intensified yet further as the guns of the Quarries started to bombard the Redan, in an effort to bring some relief to the British infantry caught before it. Kitson peered over at the Russian fort; round shot was thudding into the sloping walls with ineffectual puffs of dust, completely absorbed by the loose earth.

Once the lieutenant’s head was securely bound, Kitson moved on to the surviving private, pulling him into the paltry shelter offered by the sandbags. Whilst he was doing this, he felt a biting contraction in his chest. It was the third time
this had happened since he had left Mrs Seacole at the Quarries, brought on by the exertions of his ill-advised rush towards the fighting. He had done exactly what she had told him he must avoid, and was already discovering the cost. Something had been torn, and was deteriorating further with every step he took; he had made a cursory examination back in the trenches, and discovered fresh damage beneath the skin. His chance for a straightforward recovery was lost.

There was no time to lament this now. The private, thankfully, had lapsed into unconsciousness. Kitson realised that it was the soldier he had encountered in the advance works–the man with the injured hand who had claimed to know Cracknell. One entire side of his body had been blasted with hot shrapnel, tearing apart his worn uniform. His right leg was pulped, more or less, and bleeding heavily. A fragment had struck against the side of his face, stripping away much of the flesh. Readying his bandages, Kitson quickly bound the leg and then checked the private’s side; although a little scorched, it was largely undamaged. He turned to the man’s face.

A lone bugle sounded in amongst the gunfire, and for a moment Kitson felt weary hope; but then he heard that it was sounding an attack rather than a retreat. Turning towards the Allied lines, he saw that in defiance of all reason and tactical sense, the men of the Light and Fourth Divisions were still coming, with scaling parties now rushing out alongside them. It was a futile endeavour. The tall ladders, and the sailors who carried them, would be scattered to pieces by the relentless fall of grapeshot long before they could pose any threat to the Redan.

Kitson looked to Cracknell. The correspondent grimaced and shook his head. This action was rapidly becoming a catastrophic failure.

Then, at the same instant, both men realised that Styles had gone.

Boyce left the picketed end of his trench surrounded by two companies of his men, ensuring that he was well shielded from the hail of shot and shell that immediately fell upon
them. Around a third of the soldiers were hit; their Colonel looked back towards the trench to see a great cowering mass of the 99th still there, hesitating fearfully. Pierce was at their head. Boyce waved his sword crossly, ordering him on to the field. The Major forced himself forward, starting up a shout. He was halfway to Boyce’s position when his torso was caught by a cannon-ball, and split open like an orange burst mercilessly beneath a descending boot heel. The ball also killed one of the soldiers behind him and took the leg of another; the rest, soaked in bloody viscera, turned and ran back to the trench.

There were more reports from the Redan. Like the Forlorn Hope before them, the 99th broke apart, running in every direction. After a short dash, Boyce found himself in a dried-out ditch no more than three feet deep. Through the choking dust, he could see that a dozen of his men were already in there, and a couple of his officers. One of them was Lieutenant-Colonel Fairlie, who crawled over to his side. He had been injured in the upper arm, and was shouting something about the scaling parties. The Redan, their target, still seemed an enormous distance away. Boyce extended his field glass and looked across the battlefield. It was covered with the fallen, their numbers increasing by the second. None of the other battalions were making any more progress than they were.

Then he saw him, Cracknell of the
Courier
, scuttling away to the left, past a group of skirmishers from the Rifle Brigade who, miniés raised, were trying to pick off Russian artillery spotters up on the battlements of the Redan. This was it: his chance to put the revolting toad down for good.

‘I must go to the left side of the attack,’ he said to Fairlie, ‘and find Sir John. We must reconsider our plan.’

‘Agreed, Colonel,’ Fairlie replied, ‘but please, send a subaltern. Lieutenant Fox is here, and I’m sure—’ A shell exploded nearby; a private slumped backwards, his skull shattered. Fairlie was immediately on his feet, yelling orders and pointing with his sword. ‘Over there, quickly! They are targeting this position–we must move ourselves!’

Boyce checked his revolver and started after the Irishman.

Hopping over corpses and craters, the Tomahawk suddenly came to his senses. He had allowed this situation to run out of control.

Up ahead, Styles was moving diagonally before the Redan under the cover of a thick screen of smoke. They were leaving the main attack. The level ground before the great fort was turning into a gentle slope, furrowed in a manner suggesting that it might once have been cultivated land. He knew where they were heading; they would soon come to the remains of a graveyard, fringed by some ruined suburbs. They had kept moving thus far, and that was sensible enough–but now their best, nay, their
only
hope for survival was to keep their heads down and wait for nightfall or the declaration of a truce for the burial of the dead. He put on a spurt of speed, passing Kitson almost immediately, thinking that he would throw the illustrator over his shoulder and carry him to shelter if he had to.

As he drew level with Styles, he saw the shattered pieces of headstones, leaning this way and that; and past them, a street of collapsed buildings, pounded down almost to their foundations, that once had been part of the outer reaches of Sebastopol. Grey-coated Russians slipped through these ruins, retreating into their earthworks before a company of British skirmishers. Like them, this company had managed to creep past the largest guns, and were now attempting to launch an attack on one of the Redan’s supporting batteries.

Cracknell grasped Styles’ arm. ‘Woah there, Mr Styles!’

The illustrator tried to shake him off. ‘I am not afraid, damn you!’ he cried, his face twisted with fury. ‘I am no coward!’

The effect was actually rather startling, like being snapped at by a rabid dog; Cracknell almost let go. Then a bullet whined past them, coming from the opposite direction to the Redan. The correspondent turned to see Boyce back on the rutted slope, taking careful aim with his revolver, attempting to fulfil the threat he had made in that rifle pit. All but lifting Styles from the ground, Cracknell ran with him towards the nearest dark doorway.

It led to what must once have been the parlour of a comfortable townhouse, now missing its upper storeys and all of its doors. The remaining windows were all firmly shuttered. Entering this room was like ducking into a coastal cave to escape a tempestuous sea-storm. Although still immensely loud, the pounding of the guns was muffled enough to allow some ease of communication, and after the turbid atmosphere outside, the air seemed clear and cool. The room’s decorations were still largely intact–an odd contrast indeed with the carnage and devastation of the battlefield. The walls were covered with a pine-green paper, and a dusty spherical lamp hung overhead. Several robust pieces of furniture, fashioned from dark wood and plainly too weighty for impromptu removal, were arranged across the polished stone floor. Breathing hard, Cracknell released Styles, pushing him forward. The illustrator stumbled, the pistol clattering on to the flagstones.

‘To hell with you, Cracknell,’ he spat, sobbing now. ‘I am no
coward
, d’you hear me?’

Cracknell looked to the doorway; Kitson walked through, panting, holding his injured chest. He pointed back incredulously towards the battle. ‘So Boyce is actually trying to
kill
you
now?’

The Tomahawk rubbed his sweaty brow against his sleeve. ‘He most certainly is. Something has happened. My work, perhaps–or something more.’ He lowered his head. ‘He says he has already killed his wife.’

Kitson’s dismay was evident but he managed to suppress it. Cracknell could not help but admire this. What a team we might have made, he thought, had the fellow only retained his focus. Their eyes met; they were thinking the same thing. Boyce would be there any moment.

‘We should go,’ Kitson said. ‘Now.’

Cracknell nodded. ‘There is a ravine on the other side of the cemetery that we could head for, if we—’

A shell exploded close to the house, on the opposite side to the doorway. Debris rattled against the shutters. English voices with thick Yorkshire accents could be heard shouting out to each other, something about drawing the Russian fire. It was obvious what was happening–the enemy was manoeuvring their heavy guns so that they could destroy the ruins, and the British soldiers taking cover within them.

Cracknell noticed that Styles was down on the floor. He had reclaimed the revolver and was reloading it frantically. The boy had clearly overheard his revelation about Madeleine. Cracknell’s first thought was that he was preparing the pistol as a protective measure, to repel Boyce; then Styles glared at him with such abhorrence that he could not fail to see the truth. The bullets being loaded into that gun were meant for him.

There was a gigantic crash outside, and a falling spar knocked in a shutter on the far side of the room. The Russians had finished bringing their heavy guns about; the bombardment of the ruined suburbs had begun. Black smoke rolled in through the broken window and the doorway, quickly filling the parlour.

Boyce, as he entered, could see bodies moving about in the gloom, across a bright crack on the room’s far side, and down on its pale stone floor. He knew that others from the magazine’s reporting team were in there also, and had decided that they should rightly meet the same fate as their odious leader.

This was the moment. Richard Cracknell was trapped before him. A pistol was ready in his hand–the very same weapon used not three hours earlier to kill the woman with
whom the villain had conspired to topple him. There was a gratifying appropriateness to this. The Colonel’s finger curled around the trigger.

Before he could shoot, however, another gun flared in the murk. The door-frame splintered, and something seemed to catch against him, knocking him back out of the house. Boyce tried to level his pistol, to return fire into the smoke-filled parlour; but realised he couldn’t move, or indeed feel his right arm below the elbow. He looked down at it. The bullet had entered the forearm, about four inches above the wrist, breaking a bone and pushing it out through muscle, skin and uniform. A gory mess was dribbling out of the bottom of his sleeve, over his glove and the revolver held within it, and dripping down into the dust.

Boyce gasped hard, flattening himself against an outside wall, raising his watering eyes to the sky. The strength leaked from his body. He slid towards the ground. Transfer the revolver to your other hand, he instructed himself. Go back in there and bring this to its rightful conclusion. The Irish cur and his lackeys are your bitterest enemies. They know far too much.
Bring this to an end
.

But he could not. The pain was simply too great. Boyce struggled to his feet and shook the pistol from his useless hand. His moustache flapping loose, the Colonel clenched his teeth and started towards the nearby skirmishers.

It took Kitson a few seconds to realise that Boyce had gone. Taking his hands from over his head, he looked about cautiously. Styles was frozen in a thin blade of sunlight, still pointing the revolver at the empty doorway. Cracknell was half-hidden beneath a sturdy table across the room, where he had dived after the first balls had struck the outside of the parlour.

Kitson’s only thought was flight. The Russian artillery could bring down their shelter at any moment, and Boyce was surely set to return. They had to leave right away. He assessed the bashed-in shutter. There was space enough for them to clamber through. This was an escape route.

He gestured to Styles. ‘Quickly, this way!’

The illustrator did not react. Instead, he turned the pistol towards Cracknell, fumbling a little as he drew back the hammer. Seeing his intention, Kitson rushed forward, grabbing at both Styles’ hands and the greasy gun they held. It leapt in their unsteady, conflicted grasp, the report smothered entirely by the bombardment. A fist-sized hole was blown in the top of the table Cracknell was sheltering under. Styles bent his arm, twisting away, curling himself up; they fell to one side, the revolver becoming lost between them.

‘Styles,’ Kitson shouted, ‘please, my friend—’

He felt the pistol’s mechanism move under his fingers, and the abrupt jolt as it fired. Styles lurched violently. Kitson released the gun and backed away; and the illustrator flopped over on to his back.

The bullet had gone in at the base of Styles’ throat, just above the collarbone. Kitson had but an instant to note the location before it became swamped in blood. He took out his bandages, pressing the entire roll hard against the wound, but it was no use. He could not staunch the flow.

Styles looked up at him, blinking rapidly. He dropped the revolver and took hold of Kitson’s sleeve. His blue eyes were bright in his grimy, ashen face. All his confusion and misery had departed; Kitson caught a painful glimpse of the enthusiastic, innocent young artist he had met on the beach at Eupatoria only nine months previously. He was saying something, visibly straining for volume. Still pressing vainly on the bullet hole, Kitson moved in as close as he could, until the illustrator’s beard scratched against his ear.

Styles’ voice was choked, the words wavering on his grey lips. ‘My–my work, Thomas …’

‘Be still, Robert,’ Kitson instructed. ‘Do not move. All will be well.’

‘My work, see that it …’

This was all he could manage. His eyes went dull and the hand slid back to his side.

Kitson sat back numbly and stared at it all, at the man he had killed, at the blood that soaked his clothes and ran away thickly between the stones of the floor, surrounding them both with a dark lattice of lengthening lines. The smell
of it seemed to reach down through his mouth and nostrils to his innermost being, coating him, staining him indelibly with its sticky, nauseating warmth. He threw down the bandages in despair and looked across the parlour. Cracknell was on his hands and knees beneath the table, an oddly incongruous, comical pose. He was regarding Kitson and Styles fixedly, his expression unreadable.

There was a single moment of silence and stillness; and then round-shot tore into the squat structure around them, punching through it as if it were made from cardboard. Supporting beams gave out, releasing an avalanche of bricks; walls collapsed; cornerstones cracked and shattered. Then another ball hit, and the ruined townhouse fell in on itself.