The Street Philosopher

No candle or lamp burned inside. In the dim blue half-light Boyce could just make out the central pole and the small table set at its base, but nothing else. He stood near the flap, calming himself, checking his moustache. She was awake. He could hear her breathing, and the faint rustle of her clothes; he could sense her alertness, her watchfulness. She had been crouched at the tent’s entrance, he guessed, listening to the exchange outside, and had then thrown herself into a shadowy corner when she realised that he was approaching.

Boyce cursed his decision to bring her out to the Crimea. It had been pride, plain and simple. She had been going back to London, her passage booked and paid for. Then, aboard the steamer that had borne him across the Black Sea, he’d fallen into conversation with some old acquaintances of his from the Artillery Division. They’d opined that no married officer of good breeding would even think of leaving his spouse behind at this stage in the campaign. To do so, they had declared contemptuously, was to bow to silly modernising talk–behaviour quite beneath a gentleman. Someone, Boyce couldn’t even recall who, had asked after the enchanting Madeleine, wondering whether she was following them to the Crimea. Indignantly, he’d replied that of course she was, in a few days’ time when it was safe; and then sent word of this change of plan back to Varna as soon as he was able.

He should have known that the degenerate Irishman would be on her the instant she landed. But he could hardly send her away again now. Such a prompt reversal would be the talk of the camp, and an admission of defeat by a truly unworthy foe. No, she must stay. The campaign would surely be a short one, at least–it could only be weeks before the Russians ceded the peninsula. He would simply have to be vigilant. That such vigilance was at all necessary, however, infuriated him beyond measure.

‘You bring me such disgrace, girl, such dishonour, that I would be forgiven almost anything I did to you,’ Boyce said quietly, into the darkness. ‘Were I to blacken your eye, who could possibly think ill of me? Or perhaps if I loosened a tooth?’ He swallowed. ‘I could break your damned jaw, you wretched slattern, and no one would—’

Boyce thought he heard her whisper his name imploringly; but then, a fraction of a second later, Lieutenant Freeman called for him with uncharacteristic vigour. He swept back outside, ducking under the canvas. Close to the lamp was a horseman in a shell jacket and gold-laced forage cap. It was Captain Markham from the divisional staff.

‘Sir George’s compliments, Lieutenant-Colonel,’ said Markham briskly. ‘Lord Raglan has sent down his commands.’

Boyce nodded, straightening the front of his coatee.

‘All regiments are to strike tents at daybreak and assume full marching order.’ The Captain’s horse paced beneath him. ‘We are moving on Sebastopol.’

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

‘The epithet “unforgettable” is employed all too readily in ourexcitable times, but the sight of our Allied Army–British to theleft, French to the right, Turks to the rear–as it advances acrossthe landscape of the Crimea warrants its use without reservation orfear of hyperbole.’

Kitson tried to clear his throat. It was uncomfortably tight with thirst, and his tongue felt like it had been tacked to the roof of his mouth with viscous glue. Putting this from his mind as best he could, he jotted ‘too much?’ in the margin of the page before him and continued reading.

‘A short distance back from the great cliffs and ravines that distinguishits coastline, this peninsula bears a marked resemblance tothe Downs of our own homeland. Grass as smooth and green asthat of any racecourse covers softly undulating plains, whose surfaceis broken only by clusters of pale rocks. The columns–fully fourmiles long, from tip to tail–flow easily across this terrain, theimmense stripes of red and blue glittering with steel as they marchgallantly onwards to meet their foe with colours flying. Our LightBrigade has been assigned flanking and reconnaissance duties, andthe Earl of Cardigan’s men dash back and forth across the fieldswith a brave, impetuous energy. Spirits among the soldiery are high,as well they should be; sight of any senior officer, British or French,brings forth as mighty a cheer as—’

Someone was shouting his name. Kitson laid his pencil flat against the pocketbook, sat up and looked over the side of the supply cart in which Styles and he had lodged themselves. Directly beside this vehicle tramped the left-most column of British infantry, an amalgamation of the Light, Fourth and First Divisions. This vast formation, so solid and resolute that morning when Kitson had started his account, was growing slack as ever-larger numbers of men slowed and even stopped, overwhelmed by fatigue, disease and the fierce afternoon sun. Across a bloated river of shakos and field packs, he saw Major Maynard, who stood waving atop a gentle rise on its opposite bank.

The Major, accompanied by a corporal, had been helping a pair of his private soldiers leave the line. Both were evidently succumbing fast to cholera. A strange silence had descended upon the army, allowing Kitson to hear Maynard instruct the two invalids to rejoin the regiment at camp that night, once they had recovered themselves sufficiently to walk. The officer then set off down the rise and straight into the column, pushing his way through to Kitson’s supply cart. He was a thickset man of about forty with a greying beard and a routinely frank expression. Drawing level to the cart, he placed a gloved hand on to its side.

‘Mr Kitson, d’you seek your senior?’

Kitson grinned at the clear suggestion in Maynard’s voice that this might well not be the case. After the clash with Boyce, and a subsequent (rather desultory) attempt to speak with some of the more senior officers, Cracknell had vanished. He had not shown himself at the Courier tent–even as dawn had arrived and his juniors had set about dismantling it and then dragging it down to the beach to be loaded on to a transport vessel. ‘I suppose so.’

Maynard chuckled. ‘Then the word is that he’s right at the front of the column, harassing the 11th Hussars. They say that Cardigan is ready to run him down.’

‘Why am I not surprised, Major?’

‘That was quite some performance he gave last night. He’s developing a real talent for aggravating my commander, isn’t he?’ The Major stopped smiling. ‘That’s maybe something you might wish to discuss with him, Mr Kitson–being the more rational of the Courier’s correspondents.’

‘Faint praise if ever I heard it. And I’m afraid that he would heed me less than anyone, Major. All we can do is to endeavour to keep them well apart, and hope this campaign is over as quickly as is being predicted.’ Kitson turned over a page in his pocketbook and readied his pencil. ‘With that in mind, may I ask your opinion on the rumours that Russian forces have been sighted around the Heights at the mouth of the Alma valley–interposing themselves between us and Sebastopol?’

Maynard eyed him wearily and opened his mouth to reply. A loud smashing sound nearby distracted him; some thirty yards back from the column, a group of lancers, splintered off from the Light Brigade, were kicking in the door of a squat peasant cottage, half-hidden in a thick bramble bush. They pulled at the shards with their white-gloved hands and piled inside. Kitson hoped that its inhabitants had abandoned it and fled to safety, well out of the army’s path. Some of the marching infantrymen looked over without much interest.

‘The noble 17th,’ the Major muttered disapprovingly. ‘Such robbery is a shameful part of army life, Mr Kitson, as I’m sure you’ve discovered by now. A part that I for one hope the scrutiny of the press might help to discourage.’

Kitson remembered the statuette and Cracknell’s cursory response to the story of its destruction. ‘My hope also, Major, but there is scant interest in such matters, and a delicate balance must be struck between—’

Maynard, glowering at the cottage and the horses tethered outside it, was not listening. ‘I shall stop them.’ He removed his hand from the cart’s side and straightened his cap decisively. ‘Whether they’ll heed an infantry officer–well, we shall see. Good day to you, Mr Kitson.’

The column swallowed Major Maynard back up again and the supply cart trundled on, leaving the lancers and the cottage behind. Kitson glanced around. Styles was perched on a barrel at the other end of the cart, still sketching absorbedly. Loath to interrupt him, Kitson flicked back the page in his pocketbook and looked again at the paragraphs he had written that morning. Something about their triumphal tone was unsatisfactory. He tapped his pencil against his thumbnail; and then noticed Styles’ drawing folder, tucked between two crates not far from where he sat. It occurred to him that neither he nor Cracknell had actually inspected the illustrator’s work yet–a lamentable oversight indeed. He reached for the folder and unlaced it.

Top of the pile was a loose, urgent recollection of the exchange that had occurred before Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce’s tent the night before. It depicted the moment Cracknell appeared before the officers of the 99th. Styles had captured perfectly the contrast between the senior correspondent’s careless pose and the startled rigidity of those he confronted. The drawing was animated yet unmannered; accurate yet unfussy; balanced yet dynamic. Kitson drew in a deep breath. He’d been wondering why exactly O’Farrell had been so keen to hire this Mr Styles, given his evident inexperience–and here was the answer. Robert Styles was a man of true ability, of genius even, far beyond the hack illustrators who were usually employed by the Courier. Put an artist of this calibre in front of momentous events such as those unfolding in the Crimea, and something of significance was sure to result.

The correspondent leafed through the pile, his smile broadening; there were studies of the minarets and towers of Constantinople, of groups of people huddled against the rail of the H.M.S. Arthur, of the landing zone drawn from the sea. All were similarly expert. Then he came to one that made him stop.

It was a portrait of Madeleine Boyce. She was seated in a deck-chair, one hand raised to shield her eyes from strong sunlight. She appeared pensive, as if contemplating something away in the distance. The scene had been treated informally; it showed a young woman, fashionably dressed, relaxing on the deck of a ship. Yet the image was infused with a beauty that entirely transcended this mundane setting. It was plainly a work born of a lover’s ardour. The man who had drawn it, Kitson realised, would not give up on its subject as easily as Styles had seemed to do the evening before. There was more to come regarding the Courier’s illustrator and Mrs Boyce.

Kitson closed the folder and got to his feet. Arms extended slightly to keep his balance in the rocking cart, he made his way to its rear. ‘Mr Styles,’ he called, ‘ready yourself. We must move to the front to find Cracknell. They say he is up there somewhere, badgering the cavalry.’

He reached Styles’ side and saw the vista laid out before him. In the wake of the columns was scattered a multitude of spent and dying soldiers, shed from the advancing army like dusty red petals. This was what the illustrator had been drawing with such furious concentration: not magnificence, not glory, but suffering and ignominious death. The sheet in front of him contained studies of collapsed, cholera-ridden men, doubled up in agony or lying insensibly in pools of smoky shadow. Kitson stared hard at Styles for a moment. Ashamed by the vulnerability he had displayed the previous day, the illustrator was trying to cauterise the tender part of his soul by pressing it against that from which it had so naturally recoiled.

‘Come,’ Kitson said abruptly, handing over the folder. ‘We have to go.’

They jumped from the cart and began to walk quickly up the line, their light packs and relative freshness enabling them easily to outpace the exhausted infantry. Without slowing, Kitson lifted his pocketbook and put several heavy pencil strokes through the morning’s paragraphs.

Slowly, as Kitson and Styles worked their way along the column, the landscape around the Allied Army began to change, the wide, smooth plains rumpling up into a series of ridges and hollows. They passed several burning farmsteads, the trails of black smoke mirroring those issuing from the fleet steaming along to their right, out on the shining expanse of the Black Sea. This was not the work of mere looters–its purpose was obliteration, done to deny the invaders shelter and sustenance. The Russians were not far away.

The vanguard of the vast army was marked by a concentration of the richly coloured flags and banners that were dotted throughout the columns, and a large block of mounted officers that included several senior generals from the French and British forces. Kitson’s thirst, however, was now so intense as to confine his interest solely to locating Cracknell and obtaining something to drink. All in the British ranks suffered as he did; the correspondent grew increasingly mystified as to why no provision had been made to supply this basic want. The young illustrator, too, started to complain about his parched lips and throat. Kitson, his manner entirely serious, assured him that Cracknell would be waiting for them just past the next ridge, cradling a huge stone jug of water. He warmed to this notion, adding bunches of luscious grapes to the picture, and succulent Crimean melons, and ripe peaches too, all heaped plentifully at their senior’s feet. Styles could not help laughing at this unlikely vision.

The real Cracknell, however, continued to elude them. He was not bothering the cavalry, as Maynard had reported; a short distance inland, reconnaissance squadrons of scarlet-trousered hussars were galloping across the ridges entirely unimpeded, whooping and whistling as they went. Nor was he trying to speak to the generals. There was no sign of him anywhere. Their little quest was starting to seem hopelessly misguided.

Suddenly a febrile tremor ran through the mass of infantry. Hundreds of soldiers broke from a fatigued plod into a run. The few who still wore their packs shrugged them off; they surged between two low hills, entirely ignoring the protestations of their officers. The Courier men, buffeted by charging bodies, tried vainly to work out what was going on. Had artillery been sighted? Were these men running for cover–were Russian cannon about to be loosed? Unable to resist the human tide, they were carried along for fifty yards or more, past the hills and into a shallow valley, before being shoved to one side. The cause of the disruption was revealed. A small river, little more than a stream, was dissolving the infantry column as if it was made from dry sand.

Styles yelped in panic. ‘By Jove, Kitson, they’ll drink it all up!’

Kitson gave him a withering look. ‘Mr Styles, not even the British Army could drink up an entire river.’ He looked at the redcoats fighting to get at the trickle of muddy water–and was sorely tempted, for all his high-minded scorn, to rush down and join them. ‘We must bide our time.’

It was then that he noticed a familiar, stocky figure, standing atop a moss-spotted rock–the only person in that valley who seemed indifferent to the river. Cracknell had a telescope up to his eye, and was studying something with keen interest.

Kitson smiled, relieved to have finally tracked down their leader. He nudged Styles with his elbow. ‘Look at that, Mr Styles. As cool as if he was at the Epsom Derby.’ Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted out Cracknell’s name.

The senior correspondent lowered the telescope immediately and turned towards them. His face broke into a wide grin, and he yelled something back that could not be heard over the commotion down by the river. He started to point insistently.

This gesture directed his juniors to a company of horsemen, riding along the crest of the valley’s opposite side. They wore bearskin caps and embroidered kaftans bound at the waist by thick leather belts. Their long beards were brushed into sharp, two-pronged forks. Each had a barbed lance in his hand and a musket across his back. They were like nothing Kitson had ever seen before–irreducibly alien, like characters from a fantastical novel set in exotic eastern lands–and they were close, no more than a hundred yards away. Somewhere behind him, the Allied buglers began to sound. The men in the river looked up, falling quiet; a good number started to hurry back to their regiments.

The horsemen remained in full view for a few more moments, trotting on with deliberate insouciance, returning the scrutiny of the soggy redcoats. Then they spurred their mounts and were gone.

Cracknell’s voice thundered throughout the valley. ‘Cossacks, Thomas!’ he cried excitedly. ‘The enemy!’

Manchester May 1857 (#u7fcc8949-39d0-557d-9c58-046430f3ea08)

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

The short, guttural howl was alarmingly loud, and seemed to come from directly below Kitson’s window. He started, dropping his pen, which then rolled across the threadbare rug and under his desk; he’d been pacing the attic’s meagre length in his shirtsleeves, trying to relieve the constricting ache in his chest whilst reading through the afternoon’s work. Before he realised fully what he was doing, he’d rushed from his rooms, down three flights of stairs and out through the tenement’s peeling doors.

Princess Street was shadowy and quiet, with only a couple of small tradesmen’s carts progressing along it. To his right, Kitson could see the brightly illuminated thoroughfares of the warehouse district, still heavily populated by both pedestrians and traffic despite the hour. The faint haze of factory exhalations, ever present in Manchester, hung about the street in silky drifts tinted orange by the distant gaslight.

Kitson listened for the sound again. A large crowd of spinners started up the street, clearly just released from their labours, strands of unwoven cotton still clinging to their rough clothes. He guessed that they were heading across town towards the concert rooms and drinking dens of Deansgate. Several already had bottles in their hands, which were being passed round with aggressive, determined merriment. After a burst of hard laughter, they began to belt out a bawdy song. ‘She’s a rum-lookin’ bitch that I own to,’ they roared, ‘an’ there is a fierce look in ’er eyes…’

Slipping into a side alley, Kitson walked along the tenement’s wide brick flank until he stood under his window. Back on Princess Street, the spinners strode noisily by; and then a gurgling moan came from somewhere up ahead, further down the alley. Kitson went towards it. Away from the neat grid of commercial streets around Piccadilly, of which Princess Street could just be considered a part, Manchester soon crumbled into a ramshackle maze of winding passages, interspersed with foul-smelling doorways and grubby, impassive casements. Where there were lights, the even yellows and oranges of gas were replaced by the glaring white-green of lime, lending a spectral pallor to the few who passed beneath them.