Into the Valley of Death (2012) Read online

  A. L. BERRIDGE

  Into the Valley of Death

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Maps

  Prologue

  Part I: The Alma

  1. 14 September 1854, 2.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.

  2. 14 September 1854, 4.00 p.m. to midnight

  3. 18 September 1854

  4. 19 September 1854, 3.00 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.

  5. 19 September 1854, 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.

  6. 20 September 1854, 3.45 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.

  7. 20 September 1854, 3.30 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

  8. 20 September 1854, 5.00 p.m. to 10.00 p.m.

  Part II: Balaklava

  9. 28 September to 15 October 1854

  10. 15 to 16 October 1854

  11. 16 October 1854, 5.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

  12. 17 October 1854, 5.30 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.

  13. 22 October 1854

  14. 23 to 24 October 1854

  15. 25 October 1854, 4.30 a.m. to 10.55 a.m.

  16. 25 October 1854, 11.00 a.m. to noon

  Part III: Inkerman

  17. 25 October 1854, noon to 10.00 p.m.

  18. 26 October 1854, 6.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

  19. 26 October 1854, 4.00 p.m. to 11.00 p.m.

  20. 28 October to 5 November 1854

  21. 5 November 1854, 2.00 a.m. to 6.00 a.m.

  22. 5 November 1854, 6.00 a.m. to 8.10 a.m.

  23. 5 November 1854, 8.10 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.

  24. 7 November 1854

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  By the same author

  Honour and the Sword

  In the Name of the King

  Maps

  Prologue

  Meerut – June 1853

  Everything looked the same. Heat had dried the nullah to a muddy trickle, but that was usual before the rains came, and Ensign Harry Standish crossed the bridge to the British town with the comforting sense of coming home. Under his breath he was humming ‘Widdicombe Fair’.

  The Mall was its usual afternoon quiet. The doctor’s wife was reading in the shade of her veranda, and when he called ‘Hullo, Mrs Carron, I’m home!’ her hand flew to her mouth and the book dropped with a smack to the stones. She seemed too startled to return his greeting, and he guessed with amusement she hadn’t recognized him. That was fair enough. The boy who left India nine months ago was very different from the eighteen-year-old officer walking home in the triumph of his first-ever battle. He was looking forward to telling his father.

  He was still humming as he passed jauntily on to their own bungalow. The white gate looked the same as always, but it bumped open unevenly at his push and he saw with surprise the base was clogged with weeds. There were more growing along the path, and as his footsteps crunched on the gravel the silence blasted back at him like a ricochet from a shot. Where the devil were the servants? Even the path ahead was dirty, its white stones speckled with a spray of earth, but as he neared the house he realized the mud was moving, the random specks resolving themselves into a glinting black trail that reached all the way to the side door of his father’s study.

  Ants.

  His footsteps quickened, slapping urgently up the path. He dropped his pack, knocked on the door and said, ‘Sir?’ but the ants were bolder, swarming over his boots in their haste to scurry under the crack of the door. They weren’t soldier ants, they wouldn’t attack a living man, but he kicked out in revulsion and the door shuddered ajar at the blow. He threw it open wide.

  The stench hit him like a wall of heat, sickly, rotten, and tinged with the sourness of whisky. The ant trail trickled past his foot, solidified to an advancing phalanx, and drew his eyes up to the black, heaving mound spread over the floor in the cruciform shape of a man. But the head was monstrous, a gorgon’s, surrounded by dark tentacles of ants as they clustered and puddled over what he understood suddenly were sprays of blood or worse. Realization forced his gaze back to the body, following the eloquent curve of the outflung arm to the open hand and the metal object lying silently beside it. There were ants on the gun too.

  His throat clenched, and he reeled back through the door, spitting and retching, only vaguely aware of footsteps approaching on the gravel. A voice called ‘Master Harry-sahib!’ and old Ramesh Kumar came hurrying towards him with a basket, but his smile of welcome congealed into anxiety at the sight of the ants and open door. ‘The colonel-sahib …’

  ‘In there,’ he said, turning away to retch again. ‘In there.’ He scrubbed his sleeve violently over his mouth and saw with curious detachment the trembling of his arm.

  He heard the hoarse cry, then the slow deliberate tread as the khansamar backed out of the study to stand beside him. Thank God for Ramesh, he thought dully. The other servants might have disappeared, but the old butler would never desert them. ‘For God’s sake, Ramesh, what’s happened here?’

  ‘My fault, sahib,’ said the old man. ‘Never does the colonel-sahib send me out of town to market, never in twenty years, I should have known he would do this.’ His knees crunched to the ground, and Standish saw with shock that he was weeping. ‘Oh, what will we do, sahib, what will we do?’

  Ramesh had three times his years and five times his wisdom, but Standish felt the burden of ‘sahib’ crash round his shoulders like a yoke. There was no senior officer here, he had no father, there was only himself to be what the old man needed. He swallowed down his own shock and said, ‘No one’s fault, Ramesh. Now get me water, we’re going to clear this before anyone sees.’

  ‘Han, sahib,’ said the khansamar at once, leaping up at the sound of authority. ‘Water.’ He hurried round the house for the well and Standish forced himself to go back in the room. He wouldn’t look at the thing on the floor; that wasn’t his father, wasn’t the man he’d shaken hands with every night of his childhood, wasn’t the respected Colonel Standish who would sometimes forget himself and play bears under the dining table with his boy. He looked at the room instead and only now noticed how much was missing. The bookcase was nearly empty, the candlesticks gone, nothing on the stained tablecloth but a half-empty whisky bottle and a tumbler clouded with finger marks. He lifted them off, and whipped away the cloth as Ramesh staggered back in with a bucket. ‘In the middle, Ramesh, clear me a hand-hold in the middle.’ His father’s waist and strong chest, the middle.

  Ramesh threw. The water made a red streak in the black, the British army coat of which father and son had been so proud. Standish flung the tablecloth over the terrible head, bent to force his arms under the body, and lifted it with surprising ease. No need to look, no need to flinch, a man couldn’t be revolted by the body of his own father. He carried it outside with his head held high in a travesty of pride, and lowered it into the horse trough by the front gate. Little pricks of pain peppered his wrists where the ants bit, but he thrust the corpse under and watched the drowning insects float to the surface in a thick black scum. A paleness glimmered beneath, and just for a second he saw the horror of blood and bone and brain and the eaten-out cavities that had been his father’s eyes.

  He swung away in shock, furiously brushing the clinging insects from his arms and coat. There were steps at the gate, Dr and Mrs Carron, but Ramesh was running past to meet them, and Standish leaned against the almond tree as he fought to control his nausea. The murmur of voices gave him a moment’s space, and he allowed himself to look at the indignity of his father’s legs hanging over the edge of the trough. Why had he never seen how thin and frail they were, never until now? A terrible emptiness began to stir in his chest, and with it the first yearning of grief.

&nbs
p; He crushed it down ruthlessly to make his mind work. The money was gone, obviously, but it would take more than that to drive a devoted soldier to blow his brains out. What had it done to him, this army he’d given his whole life to? What had it done? He stared at the ground for answers, but saw only faint grey splashes of water already evaporating in the heat.

  A woman’s voice rose over the others, Mrs Carron saying, ‘Oh, Henry, Henry, that poor boy, whatever will he do?’ He watched the dark edges of a damp patch magically shrinking, until there was nothing left but a single ant lying crippled and helpless on the burning stones.

  Part I

  The Alma

  ‘Hurrah for the Crimea! We are off tomorrow … Take Sebastopol in a week or so, and then into winter quarters.’

  Cornet E. R. Fisher, 4th Dragoon Guards, letter of 4 September 1854

  1

  14 September 1854, 2.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.

  The bands were playing as they landed in the Crimea. Drums rolled, cymbals crashed, and boats bobbed to the rhythm of Camptown Races as they hauled their rafts of soldiers to the shore. The beach was already teeming with them, sunlight blazing in the ranks of scarlet and gold and rifle-green, flashing off brass-fronted shakos and glistening incongruously in the damp black bearskins of the Guards. Private Charlie Oliver of the 13th Light Dragoons watched wistfully from the rail of the steamship Jason and wondered why he felt slightly sick.

  The other fellows seemed quite happy. The deck buzzed with the speculation of men impatient for their own turn, and Oliver knew he should feel the same. He’d been afraid the Russians would resist the landing, but there’d been no cannon fire, no musketry, no sign of the enemy anywhere, and the British troops panting purposefully up the beach were greeted only by hopeful Crim-Tartar locals, rickety arabas piled high with trade-goods, and strings of depressed-looking mules. British officers were already haggling with the traders just as easily as in the bazaars of Varna, and far across the water Oliver heard the distinctive clonking of camel bells.

  ‘Looks all right to me,’ said Fisk, licking up biscuit crumbs from the palm of his hand. ‘Don’t know why they want to call it Calamity Bay.’

  ‘It’s “Kalamita”, you ass,’ said the knowledgeable voice of ‘Telegraph’ Jordan. ‘Kalamita. It’s foreign.’

  It didn’t really look it now. Specks of red were already appearing above the cliffs as British picquets guarded the road inland, and those square patches of colour were British regimental flags marking British territory. It didn’t sound it either, and Oliver’s spirits lifted as another raft landed to the familiar skirling of Highland pipes. The tension of the morning was dissolving into celebration, men shouting and laughing as they waded ashore, and even the dour Highlanders humoured the sailors’ mockery of their kilts by prancing up the beach with hands entwined like girls. It was going to be all right. It was going to be all right after all.

  Oars splashed below, one of the Jason’s own gigs pulling back towards them, and the rail beside him shook with the thump of bodies as men rushed to the side for news. ‘Hulloa, Jasons!’ called Jordan, clinging on to his shako as the crowd behind shoved him halfway over the rail. ‘What’s up? Are we off?’ Others shouted ‘Any sign of the Russkies?’, ‘Any women?’, and Fisk squashed his great bulk next to Oliver to bawl, ‘Never mind that, is there any food?’

  The coxswain looked at his gig’s crew with an air of puzzlement. ‘You hear anything, lads? Like it might be the twitter of little birds?’

  Hoots of derision exploded round the deck. Jordan cried, ‘Have a heart, chum, are we off or not?’

  The coxswain grinned up at him. ‘Couldn’t say, matey. It’s coming up for a blow.’

  Jordan grinned knowingly. ‘What about the Russkies?’

  ‘What Russkies?’ said the coxswain, and spat. ‘Never a sniff of them; you’ll be at Sebastopol in a week.’ He rummaged in a sack at his feet then stood precariously and bent back his arm for a throw. ‘Here, have a peach.’

  The pink fruit came sailing up towards their outstretched hands. Oliver watched it rise, brought his arm smart to the curve and caught it with the familiar smack of a ball in his palm. For a second he was home again, fielding in the deep on a summer cricket field, then Fisk snatched the peach, said, ‘Thanks, pal,’ and sunk his teeth into the soft flesh.

  The group broke up in laughter. The gig was moving on, but no one called after it, no one needed more; a few words and a piece of fruit were enough to make all of it real. Oliver stared at the distant shore, the low-lying cliffs, the green blur of grassy hillocks behind, and knew the intolerable waiting was over at last. The heat and stench and sickness of the camps of Varna were safely behind them, and somewhere in front lay the place they’d set out to conquer all those long months ago.

  Sebastopol! The politicians had demanded it, the newspapers screamed for it, even the crowds had shouted it when they embarked at Portsmouth. Sebastopol was the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, the prize they must take to avenge the massacred Turkish fleet and show the Russian Bear Britannia still ruled the waves. Britannia wasn’t going it alone, of course, there were French ships landing further along the bay and some Turks about somewhere, but Sebastopol could never withstand such a huge and glorious force as this. And Oliver was part of it! He looked down at his own uniform, at the brand-new good-conduct stripe on his dark blue sleeve, and felt the last of his uncertainty swept away on a wave of excitement.

  He looked round for someone to share it with, but Ronnie still didn’t seem to be about. He hadn’t been at parade either, or in the line for their three days’ rations, and Oliver began to wonder if he’d been put on some kind of fatigue. It would be beastly to make him miss all the excitement, but he was afraid it was just the sort of thing Troop Sergeant-Major Jarvis would do.

  At least the TSM wasn’t on deck either, and in his absence the mood was turning almost to carnival. Jordan was conducting a chorus of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’, Fisk gyrating his vast gut in a grotesque belly dance, and Bolton was gazing yearningly at the distant green grass as if at a vision of heaven. Prosser and Moody were actually smiling, and their beautifully polished boots tapped in unison to the music of the band. Even Big Joe Sullivan seemed to have forgotten his own misery for a while, and was scouring the horizon as if eager to find someone to fight. Everyone was excited, and who wouldn’t be at a time like this?

  Someone wasn’t. As Oliver gazed happily round the deck he saw one man standing apart, a tall, dark and faintly disreputable figure looking down at the sea with a curiously taut expression on his face. He wore a corporal’s chevrons on his sleeve, but his hair blew untidily under his shako, his jaw was shadowed by the casual stubble of a man who shaved only when he felt like it, and he was straddling the ship’s rail as if he didn’t care whether he fell or not. He’d catch it hot if Jarvis saw him, but then he probably wouldn’t care about that either. Harry Ryder never seemed to care about anything.

  But something was bothering him now, and his tense immobility tweaked Oliver with a sense of unease. Ryder didn’t have friends, he was cocky and rude and Jarvis couldn’t stand him, but he did tend to know things other people didn’t, and no one understood why. Oliver looked furtively over the side to see what was worrying him, but saw only an ordinary empty flatboat tossing and heaving in the swell.

  He looked away as Ryder’s head turned, but the corporal had seen him and at once relaxed into his usual insolent grin. He swung his leg jauntily back over the rail and said, ‘What’s the matter, Polly? Don’t you want to go to war?’

  Oliver flinched at the hateful nickname. ‘Of course. It’s what we came for, isn’t it?’

  Ryder had very dark eyes for an Englishman, slanted like an Indian’s and gleaming with amusement. ‘Is it, Poll? I’ve often wondered.’

  Oliver looked uncertainly at him. It was a moral war, all the fellows said so, they were standing up to Russia to stop them bullying poor little Turkey. He hesitated, but the troop had already spot
ted Ryder and came flocking round like noisy pigeons, shouting, ‘When are we off, Corp?’ ‘When are we off?’

  Ryder shrugged. ‘The sea’s coming up. With luck it’ll be tomorrow.’

  ‘With luck?’ said Fisk incredulously. ‘The Frogs are nearly all off, there’ll be nothing left in the villages once those thieving buggers have been through.’

  Ryder smiled faintly. ‘There’ll be nothing left for anyone once you’ve been through.’

  The troop shouted with laughter. Fisk sucked peach from his fingers and grinned.

  Moody didn’t laugh. ‘Don’t listen to him, Fisk. The sar’nt-major says we’re rostered next, and that’s good enough for me.’ Prosser immediately said ‘That’s right’ and looked aggressively at Ryder.

  Ryder’s eyes glinted. ‘First rule of toad-eating, Moody. It works better if the man’s there to hear you.’

  Moody’s face turned brick-red, but the laughter was muted and Oliver didn’t dare join in. Moody would tell Jarvis.

  Prosser certainly would, and his pock-marked face was stiff with truculence. ‘Are you saying the sar’nt-major’s wrong? Eh? That what you’re saying?’

  Ryder looked impassively at him. ‘The sar’nt-major’s right, we’re rostered next, but it won’t be this afternoon. Only a fool would land cavalry in this swell.’

  A bang like a musket shot on the deck behind, then immediately another, the hatches being thrown open to the hold. Their own farrier-sergeant was hurrying up with the vet, and a second later came a screech of tackle as sailors set the hoist to winch the horses from below.

  Ryder’s face changed. He said something under his breath that sounded dreadfully like ‘Christ’, then wiped a hand over his mouth and strode across to the farrier-sergeant. ‘Hullo, Sam, what the devil are we playing at?’

  Oliver licked his lips. The blasphemy was bad, the Christian name almost worse, and he guessed Ryder really hadn’t been joking.