The Street Philosopher

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.’

‘Your attitude does you credit, Mr Styles.’ Kitson gave the illustrator’s shoulder a companionable pat. ‘And you are best out of this business, believe me. It will bring those involved nothing but difficulty.’

Styles responded with a couple of halting nods. He was biting hard on his lower lip. The junior correspondent wished that he knew his new colleague better, so that he could tell whether this display of mature-minded acceptance was genuine.

‘I think that we shall go back to our tent and get some rest.’ Kitson craned his neck, trying to locate their senior amongst the host of soldiery that trudged around them. ‘I’ll inform Mr Cracknell and then we’ll—’

Up ahead, painted upon a whitewashed board suspended above the shako helmets and undress caps, was a large black ‘99’. They were entering the camp of the 99th Regiment of Foot, the Paulton Rangers–from which Cracknell had fled semi-clothed only a couple of hours earlier.

‘Good Lord,’ Kitson exclaimed. ‘Surely not.’

He hurried forward to the sign, and caught sight of Cracknell approaching one of the larger tents, of the sort reserved for senior regimental officers, which had been pitched a short distance away from the main avenues. Before it, around a lamp set upon a barrel, were arrayed Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce and his staff. They were conferring urgently, like participants in some dramatic biblical scene from the school of Caravaggio. Their coatees were darkened to the colour of port, and the dense patterns of gold braid on their cuffs and epaulettes glinted in the lamplight as they pointed off into the gloom.

And then, without a moment’s hesitation, Cracknell of the Courier swaggered before them.

4 (#u7fcc8949-39d0-557d-9c58-046430f3ea08)

‘Have them flogged,’ Boyce was saying coolly, adjusting his cocked hat. ‘If they are so drunk that they cannot rise from their tent, let alone lift a rifle, then they must be flogged. Before the entire regiment, at first light.’

Captain Wray saluted and was about to go back to his company when his eyes flickered to the side, and a look of absolute disgust twisted his previously expressionless features. Boyce followed his gaze. Mr Cracknell, the despicable Irish war correspondent, was sauntering casually into their lamp’s nimbus.

The Lieutenant-Colonel drew himself up to his full height, glowering fiercely at his adversary. He was a tall, athletic man of forty-five, his neat oval face adorned with a magnificent moustache that was the pride of his existence. Thick and dark above his narrow mouth, it tapered to two sharp silver points, both of which stuck out from his nose at precisely the same angle. It required a daily half-hour of careful maintenance. But the result was worth it–a moustache so perfect, so forbidding, that it inspired awe and respect in equal measure. Boyce liked to think of it as a symbol of sorts, an example to the men of the importance, and also the possibility, of keeping up appearances in their current trying circumstances.

It was an indication of his wrath that, as he faced the Courier man that night, he forgot his moustache completely. The Lieutenant-Colonel was not stupid; he knew that something had begun back in Constantinople. The blasted Irishman had been drawn to his wife like a fat, hairy fly to a piece of perfumed meat. Throughout their stay in that cramped, broken-down, filth-caked city Boyce had been dogged by the feeling that every time he entered Madeleine’s private rooms, someone else, someone male, had just left them. In the fields of Varna this feeling had grown stronger; whenever he returned to his tent, there had been the rustling of canvas covering close escapes, guys swinging in the wake of recent passage, and strange, conflicted expressions on the faces of his men. And now, after a few days without this feeling, it had suddenly returned in force when he had greeted his wife that afternoon.

She’d been all innocence and light, of course, claiming that her state of undress was in expectation of his arrival. This had been said so earnestly that Boyce had almost checked his laughter; he honestly couldn’t recall the last time they had been intimate with one another. Probably late one night, back in Chelsea, when he’d come home from the barracks full of brandy, shown the little minx the back of his hand, and then exercised his conjugal rights without delay. Hardly roses and poetry, he had to confess; but he was her husband, damn it, and a man of action.

As he searched the tent, throwing furniture this way and that, he heard a scuffling commotion outside. The Lieutenant-Colonel emerged to be told that several of his subalterns had run off in pursuit of an intruder. When they finally returned, they were lined up and ordered to explain themselves. Lieutenant Francis Nunn, the oldest and best-born among them, declared that they had chased what they believed to be a Russian spy out of the camp. Gently stroking his moustache, Boyce looked Nunn in the eye. The boy could only meet his gaze for a second or two, before staring out over his shoulder. It was quite plain that he was lying, both to protect Mrs Boyce and to save his commander from embarrassment, but he wouldn’t change or enlarge on his story. Boyce didn’t need to hear it, though. He knew that it had been Cracknell.

And now the foul knave stood before him, the horrible, stout little paddy. It made his dishonour all the more acute to think that this wretched specimen was setting the cuckold’s horns upon his head. Boyce was convinced that Madeleine had responded to the fiend’s advances in order to cause him the greatest possible humiliation. He felt as if his anger would split him open.

‘What the devil is this rogue doing here?’ he roared. ‘Get rid of him, damn it!’

Gathered around the lamp was Arthurs, the 99th’s quartermaster, and Nicholson, its surgeon, both of whom were somewhat the worse for drink; Boyce’s adjutant, Lieutenant Freeman, who was beginning to look decidedly unwell; and several field officers, including Captain Wray and the Majors Fairlie and Maynard. Of this group, it was Wray who ordered two private soldiers from the shadows and gestured for them to seize hold of the newspaperman.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Cracknell in his snide, insinuating manner, sidestepping the privates with practised expertise. ‘My colleagues and I are merely passing by, doing our duty to the British people and investigating the alarm. We happened to find ourselves close to your camp, and wondered if you could perhaps enlighten us. Are the Russians attacking? Is battle to be joined this night?’

Another civilian scurried up behind him. Boyce dimly recognised this new arrival from Varna–he was the Courier’s other correspondent. Although a thin, shabby figure of a man, he still had significantly less of the clown about him than the Irishman.

‘You there,’ the Lieutenant-Colonel called imperiously, ignoring Cracknell altogether. ‘Be so kind as to keep your blasted mick under control. We allow them in the army on the condition that they don’t ever speak. I suggest your paper adopts the same policy.’ His officers–all except Maynard, Boyce noticed–guffawed at this cutting remark.

‘Do excuse our senior correspondent, sir,’ the journalist replied with a reasonable approximation of humility. ‘He is merely excited beyond measure by this great and noble enterprise–and is especially eager for sight of the enemy. As are we all.’

The Irishman barely tried to suppress a disrespectful snigger. His junior glanced in his direction; the collusion between them was plain. Boyce realised that this must be the same correspondent Wray had blamed for ruining the mission he had been given that afternoon; and indeed, the Captain was staring daggers at him right then. The fellow was not the gentlemanly face of the London Courier, as might have been hoped. There was obviously no such bloody thing.

Boyce felt the last of his patience evaporate. ‘You are aware that the Russians read everything you publish, aren’t you?’ he bellowed. ‘That all the sensitive information you so thoughtlessly reveal about this army goes straight to Moscow, and is then wired on to the generals at Sebastopol? That having you two blackguards here compromises us all? Why, if it were my decision, your kind would be sent back to England on the first—’

He was interrupted by the all-clear, the sharp notes cutting through the chatter of the camp. When the torrent of shouted orders began a moment later, there was a palpable relief to them. Quartermaster Arthurs let out a gasping huzzah, so glad was the old sot that they had been spared a night-time attack.

‘No Ruskis tonight, then,’ Cracknell announced, rubbing his hands together. ‘D’you know, I think we’ll go and have a jaw with your brigade commander. Sir William is bound to know what’s what. You have quite enough on your plate, what with restoring order to your errant regiment.’ The vile Irishman paused archly. ‘And your lovely young wife having just arrived with us from Varna.’

Do not rise to it, Boyce instructed himself strictly, do not rise to this bald provocation, he is trying to make you seem a weak fool in front of your men–do not rise to it. Almost of their own accord, his fingers found the hilt of his sword and wrapped around it as tightly as they could.

‘Enough of this idiocy.’ He turned away. ‘See them off, this instant.’

In the corner of his vision, Boyce noticed the departing correspondents meet with another civilian, a tall man in a black jacket, plainly part of their hateful little band, who had been lurking on the margins. Dear Lord, he thought bitterly, how many of them are there? Cracknell repeated his impudent intention to call on Sir William Codrington, waved a mocking, theatrical salute–and then was gone.

The men of the 99th looked to their commander. ‘Any man of this regiment,’ he said slowly, ‘seen consorting with that rapscallion in any way will face the lash. Regardless of rank. Is that clear?’

Amidst the general affirmation, Major Maynard had a query. ‘But surely, Lieutenant-Colonel, it is our responsibility to ensure that the press—’

But Boyce was in no mood for the plebeian Maynard and his caveats. Speaking over the Major in a loud, weary voice, he instructed the field officers to return to their NCOs. Then he retired to his tent.