The Street Philosopher

Kitson made no reaction to this bold declaration. He pointed out a bird to the stall-holder. The Tartar plucked it from the basket, wrung its neck with practised efficiency, and then exchanged it for two more of the correspondent’s coins.

‘She was to be sent home, you know, by her husband.’ Kitson’s tone was matter-of-fact. ‘Due to the danger of disease. God alone knows how she managed to change his mind. I only hope that her presence here doesn’t prove too problematic.’

Styles frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

Kitson tucked the chicken into a capacious pocket. Its scaly feet stuck out, still twitching spasmodically. ‘She told you of her husband, I take it? Of how things stand between them?’

‘She did.’

Over the course of the voyage from Varna, Mrs Boyce had spoken of her husband at great length. Styles had heard of every trouble visited upon her by Lieutenant-Colonel Nathaniel Boyce–who, by his wife’s account, was a despicable, prideful boor given to all manner of senseless cruelty. Intoxicated by the intimacy that had developed so rapidly between them, Styles had sworn to himself that he would free her, that he would bring this precious lady the happiness she so richly deserved.

Kitson regarded him doubtfully. ‘One must be very careful, my friend, in trying to build an acquaintance with Mrs Boyce, no matter how, ah, innocent it might be. Countless young gentlemen, you understand, have lost themselves in those ebony eyes, nurtured torturous dreams of lying in the tresses of that luxuriant, perfumed hair, and so forth.’ He paused, the slightest suggestion of a smile on his lips. ‘The Lieutenant-Colonel is famously zealous in dispatching his rivals. They say that he has even shot several of them, in duels or elsewhere, to convince them to desist.’

Styles studied Kitson’s face again. Was this a warning? Or was it mockery? Either way, he decided that he would hear no more. ‘Are you trying to frighten me, Mr Kitson? Because if so, I must state that Mrs Boyce and I—’

‘Mr Styles,’ Kitson interrupted firmly, ‘enough games. There are some things you should know about Madeleine Boyce.’

But before he could say any more, a ripple of apprehension ran through the Tartar stall-holders gathered in the yard. They began to talk urgently, gesturing beyond the wall. Styles heard the sound of several score of boots marching in time, approaching the farm at a steady speed. The Courier men turned together to face the gate, their conversation forgotten.

‘Damn it,’ Kitson muttered. ‘Soldiers.’

There was a hard bark of martial instruction, and the first line of an infantry company wheeled into sight. Guided by their corporals, the square of redcoats advanced to the centre of the yard and stamped to attention. The faces beneath their shakos were sallow and lean, and menacing in their impassivity. A sergeant-major appeared behind them, three silver chevrons shining on his arm. Walking slowly towards the manor house, a hand on the hilt of his sword, he made a careful, contemptuous survey of the stalls. Seeing Kitson and Styles, he paused, narrowing his eyes. Kitson touched the brim of his hat with a forefinger. The sergeant-major did not reciprocate.

Styles noticed the soldiers’ regimental numeral. ‘The 99th. Isn’t that Boyce’s regiment?’

Kitson nodded. ‘And best avoided by us Courier men if at all possible. Come, we should buy what else we need and be gone.’

The correspondent made for a hand-cart piled with flaccid wineskins. Its owner managed to pull one out and exchange it for the remaining four of Kitson’s coins without once taking his eyes off the redcoats. Slinging this latest purchase over his arm, Kitson indicated that they should make good their escape. Before they had gone more than a few feet, however, two mounted officers entered the yard, riding across the cobblestones at a canter. Cutting in front of the soldiers, they came to a noisy halt at the manor house’s door, climbed down from their horses and tethered them to a stone water trough.

Kitson was watching them with great curiosity, no longer in such a hurry to depart. ‘Captain Wray and Lieutenant Davy,’ he noted wryly. ‘Old friends of the Courier. I wonder what they could possibly be doing out here?’

The two officers were now conversing intently, consulting a scrap of paper and looking up at the house. Captain Wray was a slight man with a long nose, a sharp, pinched look and a set of whiskers that gave him the unfortunate appearance of a rat wearing a ruff. Lieutenant Davy was taller and somewhat younger, his adolescent countenance all but obscured by a profusion of angry pimples. The sergeant-major marched over to them and made a brief report; the pockmarked Lieutenant glared at Kitson and Styles with open enmity.

‘A–a reconnaissance mission, perhaps?’ Styles suggested uneasily.

Kitson raised an eyebrow but did not reply.

Wray glanced at them with lordly boredom and then turned back to Davy. ‘This is the place, Lieutenant,’ he announced loudly in a high, lisping voice. ‘I am sure of it.’

The Captain pulled open the manor house’s grand double doors and walked inside, with Davy following close behind. At this, the alarm of the Tartars in the yard became more vocal. Several stepped forward, as if to pursue the officers into the building. Seeing this, the sergeant-major faced the company and gave the order to present arms. The soldiers’ abrupt movements, and the synchronised raising of their long-barrelled rifles, successfully checked the stall-holders’ bravery–for the moment, at least.

Styles was growing nervous. The atmosphere in the yard had become charged with violence; it was like being in a tavern seconds before a brawl. He looked quickly at Kitson, hoping for guidance. The correspondent, entirely calm, was moving the sloshing wineskin from one shoulder to the other so that he could take out his pocketbook. Styles suddenly perceived that this unkempt, sardonic fellow, for all his loaded pronouncements and enigmatic expressions, was the same Thomas Kitson whose laudable example had given him such encouragement. I must not quail, the illustrator thought; I must prove myself equal to that which I have taken on. He took a steadying breath and adjusted his hold on his drawing folder, which was growing slippery in his sweating palm.

Several tense minutes passed. The sergeant-major brought his men back to attention whilst the Tartars grumbled amongst themselves. Affecting a new interest in the produce on the carts, Kitson moved slowly towards the open doors of the house, keeping his distance from the soldiers. Styles was attempting to follow suit when the shutters of one of the upper windows were suddenly thrown open. He caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Davy, looking back triumphantly into the dark room.

‘It would seem that they have found what they seek, Mr Styles,’ said Kitson quietly.

A moment later, deep inside the manor house, there was a loud crash and the sound of boots rushing down a flight of stone stairs. Wray paced quickly through the double doors and over to his horse. He was holding an object in his arms, something weighty and awkward, half-wrapped in a length of sackcloth.

Davy emerged directly after him; and behind the Lieutenant, attached to him in fact, came an elderly Tartar, who was gripping on to the gold braid on Davy’s shoulder and shouting angrily. This sight drew some disrespectful sniggers from the company of soldiers, which provoked the Lieutenant to turn furiously on his aged assailant and give him a hard shove. The Tartar reeled, losing his hold on the officer’s uniform, and fell heavily against the stone water trough. Davy then unbuckled his sword and, leaving the blade in the scabbard, he stood over the old peasant and began to beat him with it. The sword cracked against the Tartar’s skull and thumped across his back. Davy’s blemished face contorted with the effort. He showed no intention of stopping, even as the man at his feet began to bleed.

An impulse to intervene came upon Styles with unexpected force. All but running across the yard, he tried to grasp Davy’s arm and restrain his next blow. Without even pausing to see who he was, the Lieutenant struck him full in the face with a balled fist. Styles staggered back and fell onto the cobblestones. The soldiers exploded into laughter.

‘Eyes front!’ yelled the sergeant-major, his face turning as crimson as his coatee. ‘Eyes front, damn you!’

Dazed and acutely embarrassed, Styles propped himself up on an elbow and tenderly touched his face. His mouth was hot, the lip split open; he could taste blood on his teeth, and feel its warmth smeared across his chin. He looked around for his bag and drawing folder. Both were on the ground not far from where he lay. Then he saw Kitson, standing in the middle of the yard, addressing Captain Wray–who was by now mounted on his horse, ready to depart.

‘Good afternoon, Captain Wray,’ called the correspondent cheerfully. ‘A fine day, is it not?’

‘Well, if it isn’t the blasted bog-trotter’s lackey,’ drawled Wray, regarding Kitson coldly from up on his saddle. ‘What the devil are you doing out here?’

Kitson smiled. ‘I might ask you the same question, Captain. I don’t recall hearing that the Light Division had been assigned any duties away from the camp. Could you enlighten me on this point? For the readership of the London Courier?’ He was holding his pocketbook ready, his pencil poised, as if in the very act of reporting.

‘None of your business, and none of your bloody readers’ business either!’ came Wray’s curt retort. He looked to his Lieutenant, who was still panting with exertion as he refastened his sword to his belt. ‘Get to your horse, Davy, we must be off.’

Kitson, however, would not release him so easily. ‘And what is that you have there, Captain?’ he inquired. ‘Forgive me, but it looks rather interesting–valuable, even. Can I ask why you have removed it from this fine house?’

Styles peered again at the object Wray now had balanced before him on his saddle. Some of the sackcloth had slipped away, revealing that it was a statuette of some kind, cast in terracotta, about a foot high. Wray and Davy had stolen it from the farmhouse; the elderly Tartar, its custodian, had been trying to stop them. The soldiers were looting.

Wray stared at the horizon, refusing to answer. His horse paced impatiently beneath him, tossing its head.

‘Only,’ Kitson continued with fearless breeziness, ‘the readership of the Courier–for whom you evidently hold such an immense regard–would be quite fascinated to hear of any antiquities discovered in the Crimea by Her Majesty’s Army–of how they were saved for posterity by the forces of enlightenment, so selflessly snatching them from the darkness of barbarism.’

A grin crept across Styles’ bloody face.

Wray sighed irritably, seeing that he had been out-manoeuvred. ‘Oh, very well, you damned grubber. Here is your blasted antiquity.’

The Captain unwrapped the statuette fully and held it out at arm’s length. It was of Saint Catherine, rendered in the flamboyant style of the Italian Baroque. The saint was posed dramatically atop her broken cartwheel, her russet limbs arranged as if she was about to launch herself heavenward. Even from the ground, Styles could see that it was a piece of some quality.

And then Wray let it drop.

The brittle sound of the Saint Catherine shattering on the cobbles echoed around the yard. It was followed by a string of hoarse exclamations from the elderly Tartar, who was trying unsuccessfully to rise from the ground; whether these strained noises were curses or lamentations Styles could not tell. With a self-satisfied smirk, Wray wheeled his horse around and commanded that the company be taken back out to the road. The sergeant-major snarled an order, turning the soldiers smartly towards the gate.

Kitson put his pocketbook under his arm and clapped a round of slow, derisive applause. ‘Oh bravo, Captain Wray, bravo!’ he shouted. ‘Oh, well done, sir! You have surely triumphed! You bested me there, and no mistake!’

Wray did not even look around. Moving ahead of the company, he spurred his horse and was gone. Davy leant over to spit at the correspondent’s feet, hissing a few vicious obscenities before riding after his Captain.

As soon as the soldiers had left, the Tartars rushed to help the old man, sitting him on the side of the trough and mopping at a long cut on his brow. A stout woman, her hair bound under a black headscarf, rushed from the farmhouse and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing loudly. Davy’s victim would not be comforted, though; shaking off the woman and rising to his feet, he hobbled over to the remains of the Saint Catherine. Seeing that there was no hope of repair, he gave the shards a despairing kick, scattering them across the yard.

‘You see now what I was referring to earlier, Mr Styles.’ Kitson was standing over him, writing materials stuffed in one pocket, chicken legs poking out of the other. His precise state of mind, once again, was hard to divine; but he did not seem unamused by their encounter with the officers of the 99th. ‘Items like that statuette should rightfully be protected, stored well away from rapacious brutes like our Captain Wray.’ He offered the illustrator his hand and pulled him upright. ‘How is your lip?’

‘Sore enough. But I shall live.’ Styles regarded his comrade with intense admiration. ‘You–you did a fine thing there, Mr Kitson. You bore witness, sir–you stood in the path of wrongdoing.’

Kitson shook his head. ‘You exaggerate, Mr Styles. I failed. The statuette was smashed, and these unfortunate people most foully abused.’ He turned towards the elderly Tartar, who was now clutching at his ribs and grimacing in pain. Immediately the weeping woman was beside him, embracing him protectively, her expression indicating that she viewed the Courier men as entirely complicit in Wray and Davy’s depredations.

‘But you at least gave them pause, sir,’ Styles insisted, ‘whereas I plunged in like a hot-headed booby and caused only laughter.’ A little ashamed, he wiped his bloody chin on his sleeve. ‘We will be reporting this incident, though, won’t we? Telling Mr Cracknell, at least?’

Kitson smiled ruefully. ‘Mr Styles, your enthusiasm is refreshing indeed to a jaded soul such as myself. Questions do occur to me, I must admit. Who, for example, directed them to this house? They were certainly acting under another’s instructions.’