Band of Angel (53 page)

“Yes,” said Deio calmly. He felt a surging excitement in his blood. “I brought my own rifle. So what’s the next move? A New Year’s Eve tot with your leader?”

“Not tonight man, you’re drunk,” said Gosford, swaying and smiling. “Go to bed, go to sleep, trim your beard in the morning. I’ll be back first thing and I promise you one thing”—he wagged his finger solemnly—“your life will change.”

And so Deio became a cavalry officer, or as he put it to himself later, a killer with a license. The next morning Gosford had taken him to the hut of Lieutenant-Colonel Hanbury, temporarily in command of the 13th Hussars, a gaunt, exhausted-looking man, who sat at a walnut desk occasionally eating dried apricots.

Hanbury began by saying he had heard Deio was a first-class horseman with some fairly decent horses. “Correct?”

“Correct.”

Hanbury waited for the “sir” that didn’t come, and then got straight down to business by saying in a low voice that they were going to offer him a “most unusual arrangement.” Unusual in the sense that joining the 13th was usually a privilege to be earned and paid for. (Later Deio found out that a few days before a large number of officers had sent in their papers and gone home, a source of great shame to the regiment.)

“Do you have any basic training?”

“No, but I can shoot, hunt, break horses—”

“He really is a first-class horseman,” Gosford broke in anxiously.

“Well, sniping is rather like hunting only the game shoot back.”

“I’m not worried about it. I can do it.” He was conscious as he said it of that surge of happiness again. War had already stirred up lots of forbidden impulses, and he had been practicing, it seemed, forever.

“Good man.”

Hanbury mopped his face with his handkerchief, sweat was pouring off it. He left the hut suddenly and when he came back shut the door.

“I shall have to be franker than I normally would be. We’re in a desperate state. The harbor is jammed and it is almost impossible to land supplies. In the matter of horses . . . we’ve lost four hundred and seventy-five in this regiment alone since the war began; not just troopers, but pack horses, too. And it is lack of transport that could kill us all.

“Our only hope now is to gather as much intelligence about the Russian positions near Sebastopol as we can for one last big push in that direction. The work is dangerous and the need for swift horses and good riders paramount.”

Deio felt his heart quicken again. “I can do that,” he said quietly.

Hanbury got two fine-looking cups out of a hamper under his desk and a soldier brewed them a cup of strong coffee, the best he had had in months, and gave him some rum and a ham sandwich. Deio couldn’t help himself, he walloped it down, and while he was eating, Hanbury told him more about the reconnaissance patrols. Because Deio was still quiet, he said they would provide him with a full uniform, a sword, and a revolver, and that he could forget the two pounds and eightpence a week officers normally paid to the mess.

“I have my own rifle, sir. A Minie.”

“Ah, yes indeed, lovely little job that, far superior to the army issue.”

Hanbury mopped his face again. He hadn’t touched his cup of coffee.

“So,” he said, “welcome to the Thirteenth. Delighted to have you aboard. Any questions?”

Deio asked if Arkwright and Chalk could be part of his team. He said they were first-class men and good with the horses. In truth,
he knew he would feel strange without them now; they felt closer to him than family.

Gosford came back and put a large package of clothes in his arms. He offered Deio one of the huts that had been left behind. “You see, I told you your life would change.” Deio wanted to wipe the triumphant smirk off his face; he said his tent was still up, and that he wanted to stay near his horses.

“Here, Jones, take this back to your tent.” Hanbury handed him a bag of coffee and a small ham, and a lamp with some dry matches. “You’ve had a tough few days, losing your horses like that.”

He had staggered, back up the hill again toward the camp, confused and aroused and laden with a stranger’s clothes and food and talking in his head to his father: “Silly old buggar, see I made it. They saw me for what I was.” Catherine would be impressed, too, she couldn’t help but be. She’d tease him but her eyes would widen. Deio Jones, cavalry officer 13th Hussars. It was a turn up.

Later that night (it was frosty outside and stalactites of snow hung frozen on the trees) he was in his tent and it wasn’t, for once, the cold that was making him tremble, but the sight of his new uniform on his bed. Gosford hadn’t said whether its previous occupant was dead or a deserter, but it was his now. The cherry-colored jacket was edged with gold and pitted here and there with small gunpowder burns; there was a sash with a watery stain on it. Two pairs of flannel drawers, two shirts with a black ring around the neck. A shaving kit with another man’s coarse black hairs in the soap. A pair of blue overalls, furred pelisses in which he would feel an absolute burk, a high fur hat, a pair of long leather boots with “Lobbs” written in the soles—too tight, he’d rather see if he could get away with using his own.

Chalk, who’d been ill again that day, lay on the floor watching him unwrap them.

“Quite sure you didn’t nip them, mate?” he said.

Deio had climbed into the breeches and the red coat; he turned around, he looked good and he knew it.

“Watch out, Chalkie lad,” he said, “I could get veddy veddy craws with you. Might even have to have you flogged.”

Both were relieved to find themselves laughing together again. Deio’s change of circumstance had thrown them all. Arkwright had gone completely silent when he’d told him and gone outside to stand with the horses.

“What’s the matter, Arkie?” Deio asked, when he went outside to see him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Try to say.”

Arkwright had turned his big tragic eyes on him. “If I hadn’t lost them, you wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Maybe not, but I’d want to,” he’d said.

“Then you’ve got a death wish,” said Arkwright.

They lost no time in sending him out. Gosford spent a day briefing him and arrived the next day, all officiousness and maps, to tell him that Hanbury wanted them to the Fifth Redoubt the following night, and the night after that to get as close as they could to Sebastopol.

The next morning he got up early with Arkwright and tried to still his nerves by sticking to his usual routine. He groomed all the horses until they shone, polished their tack, and tried on the new regimental sheepskins he’d been given for them. Two were torn and muddy, but he couldn’t help the swelling of his heart when he put them over the saddles: he felt he was conferring some power, and maybe making up for their other disasters.

He waited and watched more snow fall, drifting and then flurrying through the trees. In the early afternoon he went back to his tent and unwrapped his Minie from its case. He held the rifle loosely in his hand and caressed its barrel. He’d got it from a gunsmith he knew near Smithfield’s and it had cost him a cow, but it was worth every penny. The French, who mostly had Minies themselves, laughed at the Englishmen’s heavy inaccurate muskets—they wouldn’t laugh at his.

He was not as calm as he was pretending to be. He’d had a bad night’s
sleep the night before, a semi-awake nightmare of worry about the horses, and about Russian soldiers lying behind the sandbags and trenches of Sebastopol. The Russians had thick greatcoats and fat rosy faces, and they were smiling. Before dawn, he dreamed of Catherine. He held her again, put his face next to hers, and breathed her in. It was so sweet that waking up was like being torn from heaven.

The ship had stopped moving, they knew they could put it off no longer. They must look at Balaclava for the first time. They put on their cloaks and bonnets, went out in the face-slapping cold, walked to the top deck of the ship.

Porter, who’d been up earlier, had warned them to brace themselves for some terrible sights, the worst she had ever seen. The air was thick with bad odors, putrid and sickly, and when she looked down Catherine saw piles of blue and gray men, dead or writhing in agony, lying on the decks of the jammed ships, bathed in the light of a weak winter sun. In the gaps between the ships, what looked at first like buoys or sandbags, were dead bodies, bobbing in a suppurating froth of pink and yellow water. She could feel herself detaching from reality and going into a softened fuguelike state.

“Why pink?” She heard herself say.

Porter, clutching her hand, said that because the corpses had been buried at sea without proper weights, they’d come to the surface of the water again. Now she saw that between them floated pieces of people: a head decapitated on an anchor chain; a leg, purple and shiny; a man’s trunk in a sodden uniform. The smell of sulphated oxygen they gave off was so sweet and so meaty that, after one inhalation, Catherine went down to the cabin and was violently sick.

When she came round, Sister Clara sat on the bunk opposite her sponging Miss Pruitt’s head with eau de cologne.

“Fainted,” she said, “dead away. I’m not surprised. The Sanitary Commission was supposed to have cleared the harbor up, but if
anything it’s worse than I remember. Have a sip of water dear, but try not to take too much.”

“I’m sorry,” said Catherine, “I’m so sorry.” She was crying, yet she felt separated from herself as she listened to her teeth chattering and drank the sherry-colored water. “I’ll get used to it.”

“No, you won’t dear,” said Sister Clara briskly, “not this. Why should you?”

They were told to stay in their cabins for the rest of the afternoon while their ship jerked and bumped onwards toward the landing quay. A lump of salt pork and some biscuits arrived but none of them could eat. Miss Pruitt got on their nerves by crying a great deal and repeating that she never should have come. Nancy Porter bit her fingernails until they bled. And Catherine tried not to think about Deio, maybe so close and maybe hundreds and thousands of miles away. Death, once so terrible, such a big thing, now felt so ugly and ordinary, almost inevitable.

“Where are the Russians now?” she asked Sister Clara, who took an interest in military strategy. They were in bed together sharing a blanket, trying to keep warm. The other women had fallen asleep.

“Ah, well, the rumor is that close to one hundred thousand of them moved into Sebastopol a couple of months ago,” said Sister Clara. “It may only be a rumor.”

“How far away is Sebastopol?”

“About ten miles north of us here.”

“Of this ship?”

“Of this ship.”

“And how many are we?”

“I can’t say exactly, nobody knows. My guess is twenty thousand if we’re lucky and if you count the allies.” Catherine shook her head, and heard herself pant. Sister Clara was renowned for looking on the bright side.

“My God,” said Catherine, “aren’t you frightened?”

“Forget I said any of this, won’t you, dear?” Sister Clara was whispering. “I’m talking too much. I must miss going to Confession.” They closed their eyes, but Catherine couldn’t help herself.

“Why on earth did
you
come back?”

Sister Clara gave her an anxious glance. “I was sent back to do God’s will. There is no other choice.”

“Are you all right?” The nun’s face was as pale as her wimple.

“God asks a lot,” Sister Clara’s voice was monotonous, “but he doesn’t ask for more than you can give.”

“I’m so sorry about Clancy,” said Catherine. The trumpet player had died in the night. “You gave him so much pleasure.”

“I think I killed him,” said Sister Clara. “I reminded him of everything he’d lost.”

Three days later, at ten o’clock at night, they were taken in a bullock cart up the hill toward the General Hospital. They lay in the back of it, their cloaks encrusted with frozen snow and bullock droppings, their limbs so cold they were locked into one position.

“This is nothing,” said Sister Clara, who had tried to get them to sing to keep warm, but their lips were too cold. “This is nothing,” she repeated through juddering teeth. “Every few weeks here there is a spell of what the soldiers call ‘Russian cold,’ when the temperature sinks to ten below zero. Then, if you put your hand on metal, it will stick to it.”

When they reached the top of the hill, a large and beautiful moon was riding on top of some dark clouds. It shone down on the hard snow and on the four wooden huts that comprised the hospital, washing everything in a silvery, bluish light, and making their first view of the General Hospital, Balaclava, almost romantic.

The door was opened by a clearly exhausted elderly woman with a storm lamp in her hand. She told them her name was Miss Weare, that she was the superintendent of the hospital, and that they should follow her down to the kitchen for a bowl of negus and then go straight to bed.

“Oh God, not another woman,” muttered Porter to Catherine. “I’d far rather take orders from a man.”

Down in the kitchen was a Welsh cook, Miss Davis, about sixty years old. “Sit down here,” she told them, “and get this down you.”

She gave them a glass of what she called Crimean wine, sugary and hot and pinched with cinnamon, and then she put some
bread in the bottom of four white dishes and ladled meat broth over it.