The Street Philosopher

3

The night sentries maintained that the mist out by the northern barricades was so dense that it was as if Almighty God had reached down from Heaven and rubbed out a bit of creation with His divine thumb. It was cold out there too, and quiet; a deathly graveyard hush after the ceaseless bustle of the camp. This was where the Russians would come from, it was reasoned, if they were to come at all. Every man who stood watch there half expected to see the enemy at any moment, arrayed in their thousands, marching towards him from out of that eerie grey void. Like some red-coated vision of the damned, they coughed, cursed, and scratched miserably at persistent rashes acquired in the whorehouses of Constantinople, staring always at the thirty yards of open ground between them and the edges of the mist.

Yet on the third night, when someone did appear, for several long seconds they froze up altogether. This man was running fast, his cheeks flushed and his black hair awry, a cap of some kind clutched in his hand. Greatcoat flapping around his knees, he didn’t stop or slow down, or even look in their direction. He kept on going, swerving slightly to run roughly parallel to their line, his arms pumping back and forth, his boots pounding through the wet grass. This had to be a Russian spy, of which the sentries had been promised there was a whole devious legion, making a break for his own territory.

The soldiers’ firing, when it began, was erratic at best. The spy was a difficult mark, moving quickly, and they hadn’t been ready for him. Every bullet went wide; some swore, as they lowered their miniés, that they could see a grin spreading across the villain’s face. Then a burly corporal pulled himself up to his full height and swung his rifle’s stock expertly against his shoulder. The end of the barrel fixed on the running man and followed him along for a few yards; then the shot rang out, the man stumbled, and was down. There was a cheer, and laughter, and several hearty slaps to the corporal’s broad back. The first kill of the campaign!

The laughter faded abruptly as the man got up, his feet slipping in the dew, and set off again, at much the same pace as before. Some started to reload hurriedly, tearing at the paper cartridge packs with their teeth. Others started clambering over the barricades, attaching their bayonets, intending to give chase. It was suddenly clear that the spy was heading for a large thicket of wiry bushes a short way to the east. The soldiers shouted to each other, trying to head him off; but he was too fast.

‘Come on, you idle dogs!’ he cried as he went. ‘That the best you can do?’ And then he dived into the bushes, and was gone.

‘Raise the alarm!’ ordered an excited major, freshly arrived on the scene. ‘Full alert! At once! Back to the pickets!’

The soldiers obeyed, and the alarm was raised; but those who had heard the escaping man’s taunt knew that if this really was an enemy spy they pursued, it was one with a distinctly Irish-sounding accent.

After crashing through the undergrowth to the open ground on its other side, Cracknell turned to check that he wasn’t being pursued. Past the bushes, all that he saw was the billowing greyness of a thick sea fog, blowing in from the bay. The bastards are quick enough to fire from the safety of their barricades, he thought with a triumphant sneer; but giving chase, well, that is another matter entirely.

Panting from the effort of his dash for safety, Cracknell pushed his cap back on his head, and mopped his brow with a stained twist of handkerchief. Somewhere inside him, he knew that it had been mad folly to try to creep back into camp from the north. But he felt not even the faintest tremor of guilt for the tumult he had caused. The sensation of the bullets slicing through the air so close to him, tugging at his clothes even, had been monstrously exhilarating. And now, off in the distance, the bugles were sounding a piercing reveille across the shadowy fields. Torches were being lit, and a multitude of soldiers were stumbling from the lines of white, conical tents, buttoning up jackets and readying rifles with anxious haste. That it was all in his honour made Cracknell’s chest swell with a perverse pride. He drew a battered silver hip-flask from his coat pocket, raising it towards the agitated camp before taking a long swig. Then he carried on his way at a considerably reduced pace, one hand pressed against a stabbing stitch in his side.

The Courier tent was pitched at the very edge of the camp, close to a shallow, brackish pond. As he approached it, Cracknell dropped to his haunches, keeping to the shadows. Kitson stood in the light of an oil lamp, the triangles of his shoulder-blades clearly visible through his frock-coat. His junior was talking about the alarm–about how there’d been one the night before that had amounted to nothing, and how such scares were to be expected, given the situation. Cracknell took another gulp from his flask, chuckling softly. Our Mr Kitson’s becoming quite the weathered field operative, he thought. What change can be wrought by expert guidance and a few months’ privation!

He turned his attention to the focus of Kitson’s little lecture–the illustrator. The boy was nodding along, plainly determined to put a brave face on the possibility of an enemy attack. And yes, Cracknell admitted grudgingly, he was handsome, as Maddy had said, in a bland sort of way; but Christ, so callow! Was O’Farrell deliberately trying to make his life as hard as possible? First an art correspondent, of all bloody things, now a youth so fresh-faced he looked as if he’d just been released from double Latin!

A large wineskin was passed between them. Cracknell stayed still for a moment or two, listening. Their conversation suggested that a rapport of sorts had been established. So much the better, reflected their senior. It will ease my burden if they’re watching out for one another. Just as long as they don’t forget who’s in charge.

Then the illustrator happened to glance up–straight into Cracknell’s eyes. He began stammering and pointing. Before Kitson could look around, Cracknell propelled himself forward, charging into the lamplight towards his reporting partner. He was the heavier man by some distance. They collided, tumbling together into the dirt.

Kitson fought to disentangle himself. The illustrator stood to one side, fists clenched, petrified by uncertainty and incomprehension. Cracknell, now lying on his back, shook with laughter.

‘Mr Cracknell!’ Kitson exclaimed breathlessly as he climbed to his feet. ‘What in God’s name—’

Cracknell lit a cigar, holding a match to its tip and sucking with relish. ‘Just testing your reflexes, Thomas!’ His accent, usually mild, had been thickened by drink. ‘Have to keep you on your toes, my lad! How will you face the Bear if you can’t manage the more good-natured assaults of your leader? Eh?’ He chortled throatily around his cigar, puffing out small jets of smoke.

Kitson, rubbing at a twisted elbow, did not look convinced. ‘I suppose, then, that I am expected to thank you for the service?’

With a final loud laugh, the senior correspondent hauled himself up, removed his cigar and took another healthy swallow from his flask. As he smacked his tingling lips, he realised that the young illustrator was staring at him in a manner he did not wholly appreciate. Cracknell smoothed down his wild black beard and made a brusque introduction. Then he noticed a small, dark discolouration at the side of the boy’s mouth.

‘Is that a bruise I see there, sir?’ he asked with gruff, slightly menacing good humour.

The illustrator glanced at Kitson. ‘It is, Mr Cracknell. A lieutenant saw fit to strike out at me after–’

‘A lieutenant?’ Cracknell grinned. ‘You work damned fast, my friend! Why, it took me weeks to be struck in the face by an officer, yet you have achieved it in a matter of hours! A fellow after our own hearts, eh, Thomas?’

Kitson nodded in dry agreement.

‘To be perfectly frank with you, though,’ Cracknell went on, inserting the cigar back between his teeth, ‘I don’t quite see the point of your presence here, myself. The Courier’s foreign correspondence is about words, mine and Kitson’s–the combined efforts of Britannia’s two greatest descriptive minds. We are not the Illustrated London News. We do not, in my view at least, need anything as crude as images to convey our experiences.’ He tapped off an inch of ash. ‘But I have been overruled by my editor. Here you are, Smiles, here you bloody well are, and we shall make the best of it, by God!’

The illustrator looked confused, uncertain whether he had just been endorsed or denounced. ‘I–I thank you, Mr Cracknell. Excuse me though, sir, the name is Styles–S, T, Y—’

Cracknell waved Styles quiet with a meaty, indifferent hand. ‘There is much fodder in this place, is there not, for your work? Grand panorama and so forth?’ Styles lifted up a leather-bound folder, opening his mouth to speak, but Cracknell did not require an answer. ‘You join us late, of course, but that is no loss. The most memorable scenes Varna had to offer were of hundreds of soldiers, felled by cholera long before they could see battle, being buried in ditches–and somehow I don’t think this was quite what that hopeless old muff O’Farrell envisaged when he signed you up.’

The senior correspondent retrieved the wineskin, dropped when he had tackled Kitson, and hefted its sloshing weight. He smiled approvingly; they had made a good inroad into its contents. If there was a man of spirit and courage who was impervious to the robust charms of liquor, Richard Cracknell had certainly never met him.

‘No, young Smiles, this is where the real drama will be staged,’ he went on, ‘here in the Crimea. This peninsula, y’see, has a rich strategic value. It is the promontory from which the Russian Bear exerts its baleful influence over the Black Sea. Thirty miles in that direction,’ he pointed off into the night, ‘lies the mighty fortress-port of Sebastopol; and over yonder,’ he swung his arm in an expansive arc, ‘across the waves, is poor Turkey, Europe’s helpless invalid, ailing and weak–and bound to the British Lion by sacred bonds of honour.’ Cracknell’s excitement was mounting. ‘The Bear has been swiping at this feeble bird of late, snapping at it hungrily–so we will go to Sebastopol and we will knock it down. We have let this Bear grow too hale and hearty, Mr Smiles, and altogether too large, and must now give it a good whipping to remind it of its place! Isn’t that so, Thomas?’

‘It 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 Courier, of course–had revealed that the Lieutenant-Colonel had been summoned to meet with his divisional commander and would not be back for some hours. As a result, when Madeleine Boyce pulled back the flap of her husband’s tent, Richard Cracknell was seated within, a bottle of champagne filched from Boyce’s own personal supply at the ready. ‘Her shriek of joy, my lads, as she rushed into my arms, damn near raised the camp.’

Kitson glanced over at the illustrator. He was walking with his head down, his face lost in shadow.

Cracknell pressed on relentlessly. It was obvious that he had guessed Styles’ infatuation, and was acting to stamp it out in his customarily brutal fashion. ‘I’m sure that I don’t have to tell a pair of young bucks such as yourselves how it can be when lovers are reunited. Suffice to say that we lost track of time completely. Next thing I bloody know, Boyce is outside, shouting for a servant to bring his supper. And the bugger’s damned close–almost at the tent. So, Maddy pulls on her petticoats, stuffs the empty bottle in a trunk and tries to order her hair. I tug on my boots, gather together my clothing, steal a final, delicious kiss–and then squirm out under the back, like a hound digging its way under a bloody fence!’

Over at the barricades, there was a solitary rifle report, ringing through the darkness and echoing faintly against a distant, unseen cliff-face. Several thousand heads turned, accompanied by a great rush of muttering. Officers and sergeants yelled for information, attempting to ascertain whether anything definite had been seen.

Cracknell, unperturbed by this interruption, continued with his lurid story. ‘So there I was, in the middle of the camp–not so very far from here, in fact–all but naked. And quite, quite drunk into the bargain. Maddy, bless her, can’t take much, so I’d sunk most of the champagne myself. And worst of all, there was a gaggle of junior officers, right there before me, reaching for their swords. Chased me right out into the fields, the blighters did. And then, all of a sudden, they bloody well gave up. A few oaths and they were gone, just like that.’

‘You were out in open country, Mr Cracknell?’ Kitson asked, unable to restrain his curiosity. ‘In which direction?’

‘To the north-west,’ came the insouciant reply. ‘Towards Sebastopol.’

‘Did you see any sign of the Russians, sir?’

Cracknell shook his head. ‘No, Thomas, I did not. Evening was closing in. My only desire at that point was to return here, to my fellows, and find myself a drink. I ran back to the barricades with all the speed I could muster.’ He nodded nonchalantly at the restless camp around them. ‘Attracted a fair bit of attention along the way.’

There was a pause. Kitson blinked incredulously. ‘You caused the alarm, Mr Cracknell?’ The senior correspondent’s behaviour, as he had learned through a succession of practical jokes and grandstanding confrontations, could be disruptive indeed; but this was well beyond the scale of his usual japery. ‘This little patch of bedlam is all your handiwork?’

Cracknell grinned, rubbing at his bulbous, drink-reddened nose. He shrugged in unrepentant admission. ‘The men certainly need the bloody practice, I tell you. Although they managed to snag me, look!’ He broke off to fumble with his greatcoat, as if searching for something. After a few seconds, he held up the right side and poked his finger through a neat bullet hole. ‘Ruined, and four pounds it cost! I’ve a good mind to bill the fellow responsible.’ He started to laugh again, wiggling the finger from side to side. ‘Look at that, Mr Smiles!’

Styles looked up sharply, not at Cracknell’s coat but straight into his eyes. ‘Styles,’ he spat with naked loathing. ‘My name is Styles, damn you.’

Swiftly interposing himself between them, Kitson put an arm across the illustrator’s chest and forced him back a few paces. Styles’ face was flushed; he was smarting painfully both from the disappointment itself and the elaborate spite with which it had been conveyed. He strained hard against Kitson’s arm, seemingly eager to lunge at Cracknell and do him an injury.

Kitson gripped the black velvet jacket, taking hold of it with both hands. Their boots, pushing in opposite directions, slipped a little on the muddy ground. ‘Mr Styles,’ he said, his mouth close to the illustrator’s ear, ‘I must beg your forgiveness. I did mean to tell you earlier, but—’

Styles shook him off with considerable vehemence. ‘Don’t trouble yourself on my account, Kitson!’ he growled, clearly determined to show no weakness. ‘Don’t suppose that I need your damned protection!’ He had been halted, though; he took two confused steps that led him in a small semi-circle, so that he faced back the way they had come.

Kitson looked around; Cracknell, well satisfied with how things had gone, was striding onwards, his mind already on other matters. ‘Not my intention,’ Kitson replied disarmingly–and somewhat dishonestly. ‘Not at all. I swear it.’

Styles gave up on his wrathful display, sighing heavily and shutting his eyes. ‘Forgive me,’ he mumbled, splaying his fingers against his brow, now more ashamed than angry. ‘It is nothing. The error is mine. I–I see now that it was before me all the while.’