is, Mr Cracknell.’ Kitson had heard all this before, of course, and there was the usual trace of flippancy in his manner. ‘The Lion will, ah, whip the Bear. To rescue the turkey.’
Cracknell’s eyes misted over with alcohol-fuelled passion. ‘A great adventure awaits us, my friends. We shall see the glories of war up close and true, and we will deliver them to the great British public. A more splendid mission is hard to imagine.’ He drew the stopper from the wineskin with a flourish. ‘Let us drink to this team of ours! Let us drink to all we three shall achieve!’
After a long pull of the rough rustic wine, Cracknell lobbed the skin to the illustrator. When they had all partaken, the senior correspondent straightened his lapels, suddenly businesslike. ‘Now, gather yourselves. The camp is abuzz, and we must investigate this alarm on behalf of our readers. There is no time to lose.’
Setting off at a vigorous pace, he led his subordinates back around the pond and into the long, foggy avenues of infantry tents. Everywhere, dark shapes were streaming past stretches of pale canvas, stumbling and jostling as they went. The chilly air hummed with shouts, questions and curses. Torches were evidently in short supply; and when one eventually came into view, weaving through the crowds, it revealed only grim turmoil. Cracknell threw away the butt of his cigar and tried to get his bearings. Over to the right, he spotted a makeshift signpost tacked to a pole beneath a naval lantern. It stood at a rutted, muddy crossroads, with arrows pointing off in every direction. He elbowed his way towards it.
Kitson arrived to his side. Cracknell saw alertness and energy in the junior correspondent that mirrored his own exactly. My protégé is keen for proper experience, he thought. He wishes to demonstrate that he has left his time in the Courier’s more effeminate regions utterly behind him–that he is fit for manly duty. And his chance surely approaches.
‘This is chaos, Mr Cracknell!’ said Kitson. ‘If the Russians were to attack now, we’d surely be swept back into the sea!’
Cracknell grinned. ‘Indeed, Thomas! I’m beginning to think this invasion may have lost the element of bloody surprise, aren’t you? Well, all the better–it will be a solid fight, with armies meeting on the open field. Glory, my friend, and a swift resolution.’ He clapped his hand on Kitson’s bony shoulder. ‘Do you have a report for today?’
‘I have, sir–the disembarkation of the Light Brigade.’ He hesitated. ‘Also, I feel I should tell you that Mr Styles and I had the misfortune to encounter the grenadier company from the 99th, commanded by none other than Captain Wray. It was then that his Lieutenant, Davy, struck our illustrator about the face. They were looting, Mr Cracknell. Wray destroyed a valuable statuette in front of me, in fact.’
‘Is that so!’ Cracknell had returned his attention to the signpost. ‘Hardly surprising. I trust you made no mention of this incident in your report. We don’t want to puncture the patriotic spirit at this early stage with tales of how soldiers actually behave, now do we?’
‘I had assumed that this would be your view. What about yourself? Did you manage to speak with Lord Raglan?’
Cracknell shook his head. ‘No, our esteemed commander-in-chief eluded me once again. But I found ample diversion in another quarter.’
The senior correspondent looked again at the illustrator, who was attempting, rather hilariously, to act like a consummate, focused professional, to whom the seething camp was no great thing. He remembered the expression on Maddy’s face a few hours earlier, naïve yet sly both at once, as she’d talked about the boy. Cracknell and Madeleine had been lying in each other’s arms in her husband’s tent, their clothing in disarray, and suddenly she had been filled with a burning desire to discuss the Courier’s latest addition, whom she had apparently befriended on the boat from Varna. ‘Oh, he’s so talented,’ she’d said, ‘and so handsome! And Richard, I do believe he’s a little in love with me…’ Cracknell, familiar with her tactics for eliciting the declarations of devotion to which she was quite addicted, had merely reached for his cigar case.
Now the young dolt stood before him, with no idea of what was coming. Cracknell took out his flask and emptied it with a flourish. He always enjoyed moments such as these–the moments directly before the delivery of a felling blow. ‘By some odd coincidence, I too had a run-in with the 99th this afternoon. Let me tell you both of it.’
As Cracknell commenced his tale, Kitson remembered with stunning abruptness that he had not imparted his warning to Styles.
Soon after leaving the Tartars’ market, they had uncorked the wineskin and started to drink. The confrontation with Wray and Davy had fostered a natural sense of solidarity between them. Styles, plainly unused to alcohol, had begun to talk with great warmth of Kitson’s personal importance to him–of how learning of the junior correspondent’s principled renunciation of the Metropolitan art world had sealed his own commitment to their current mission. This revelation had made Kitson uneasy. Never entirely comfortable with the regard of others, he’d barely recognised himself in Styles’ admiring account. That someone had actually gained inspiration from him, and sought to follow him, seemed nothing short of ridiculous.
In his awkwardness, Kitson had quickly changed the subject, prompting the illustrator to tell him instead about the life he’d left back in England. Predictably enough, Styles was an aspiring painter, trained at the Royal Academy schools; they had in fact skirted around the same social circles, and had a small group of mutual acquaintances. Styles had held forth at some length on the desperate insipidity of these people, and the horrible, complacent myopia of London society in general. Kitson could not help smiling at this tirade. He had said similar things himself no more than a few months earlier.
The illustrator had been quieted only by a row of cholera dead, about a dozen of them, laid out beside a low hedge on the outskirts of the camp. The drone of insects had thickened the air, and as they passed by a large bloody rat ran from beneath what had recently been a lance-corporal. Styles, his face suddenly a flat grey, had handed Kitson the wineskin, insisting that he was perfectly fine but could drink no more at present.
Watching the illustrator trying vainly to dampen his horror, Kitson had felt a sudden sense of responsibility towards him. I am a significant part of the reason he’s here, he’d thought, in these extraordinary circumstances; were it not for my apparently shining example, this impressionable young artist might well have lost faith in his plan to follow the army to war. This realisation had annoyed him. Such a burden was unwelcome–but it could not, in good conscience, be set down or ignored.
Already, however, Styles had been failed by Kitson’s inattention. The unpleasant truth about Madeleine Boyce had not been revealed–and Kitson knew that this was a lapse for which the illustrator would now surely suffer. Cracknell rapped one of the arrows on the signpost with his knuckle, upon which ‘1st Brig, Lt Div’ was printed in crude black letters, and started to walk in the direction it indicated. His pace was more relaxed than before; he adopted the manner of a strolling raconteur, talking loudly and heedlessly, despite the extremely sensitive nature of what he was revealing.
‘Whilst hunting Lord Raglan,’ he began, ‘I chanced upon Major Maynard. You remember him, Thomas? A veteran of the Sikh Wars, Smiles–an India man only recently transferred to the 99th Foot. Not a great friend of Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce, I think it’s fair to say. Theirs is the all-too-common enmity that exists between professional soldiers who’ve actually worked their way up through the ranks, and those damnable gentlemen-officers who owe their rather more rapid ascendancies to the advantages of privilege and wealth. At any rate, Maynard kindly informed me that Mrs Boyce had landed, quite unheralded, and was on her way over from the beach.’
A few more casual enquiries–made in the interests of the London
