The Winter Soldiers Read online

  ‘Talking of numbers, did you know,’ he began, and they all leaned forward seeing that his eyes were sparkling, ‘did you know that only last year – last year – the English autodidact George Boole created symbolic logic? Yes indeed. He published a short treatise, which I have read from cover to cover, entitled Mathematical Analysis of Logic in which he maintains that logic must be connected to mathematics – numbers and such – and not to philosophy, which in the past, as you are all probably aware, was the case. This is all laid out in his latest pamphlet, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought.’

  Eyes had seriously glazed over again. Crossman was not surprised. He too was not all that keen on theoretical discoveries: bits of paper laying out various theories and results of investigations of the mind. He liked his discoveries and inventions to be more solid. Bridges. Ships. Railway engines. That sort of thing. Clearly his audience was not greatly taken with George Boole, genius or no. There were no images to grasp when discussing such things. It had been all right as an opening gambit, to sort of link what they had been doing with what they would be doing. Yes, he had definitely made progress, but he did not want to lose them now.

  ‘Four years ago,’ he continued, in hushed tones, ‘there was a French naval engineer by the name of Stanislas Henri Lureant Dupuy de Lome.’ Those scratching on slates with chalk looked up in panic. He hurriedly assured them, ‘You don’t have to remember his full name. Simply “de Lome” will do. Anyway, this brilliant man developed an armoured frigate,’ he dropped his voice almost to a whisper to build up the suspense, ‘steam-powered and screw-propelled, no less.’ He waited for this fascinating information to fall on the waiting ears, then continued with, ‘An ironclad with great speed! What now for our wooden ships with flimsy sails? Why, warfare at sea has been transformed. And I have it from my friend Rupert Jarrard, an American here in the Crimea, that one of his countrymen – John Ericsson – has developed a revolving gun turret which could be situated on the deck of such a vessel, to sweep the seas 360 degrees.’

  A child was clearing its throat. ‘My da,’ he said, nodding at those around him. ‘My da is in the Royal Navy.’

  ‘So’s mine,’ said a girl. ‘Mine’s a warrant officer.’

  A soldier spoke up. ‘Iron ships? Why, they’ll sink as soon as you look at ’em.’

  ‘But they don’t,’ replied Crossman. ‘Anything hollow enough will float on water.’

  ‘Yes, but,’ said another, ‘they’ll always be breakin’ down. Now sails is reliable. You can’t do better than sails. And iron’s too heavy for sails to push along.’

  ‘What about the doldrums?’ cried Crossman.

  ‘What?’ asked the soldier.

  ‘Windless days. Becalmed ships? If you have an engine . . .’

  ‘Always breakin’ down,’ stated the soldier again, to the approval of his friends on the back row.

  Crossman swallowed a retort. Instead he countered with, ‘If Crampton’s locomotive can do for land, then de Lome’s ironclad can do for the sea.’ He tried for a more mundane tack. ‘What about Isaac Singer’s sewing machine, then?’

  Now he had the attention of at least two of his audience. The women ceased sewing and stared at him aggressively. Then Crossman recalled the Paris riots, when tailors and seamstresses took to the streets to protest violently against the introduction of Thimonnier’s sewing machine, invented a short while before Singer’s contraption, which they claimed would put them all out of work. Thimonnier was ruined and had to return to his native town of Amplepuis and resume his own trade as a tailor.

  ‘Well, perhaps not the sewing machine. Ah, ah, I have it. The electric clock.’

  He did indeed have it. Eyes went round with interest. A brilliant idea came to him. Absolutely brilliant, and absorbing, and full of great shining promise. ‘I’ll tell you what we shall do,’ he said. ‘We shall attempt to fashion an electric clock. We’ll make one, out of . . .’ He looked around him, seeing nothing. ‘Well, out of bits of wire and paper and wood. We shall power it with wind and magnets, to create the electricity. Electricity!’ His tongue savoured the word. ‘Magic, you know. Sheer, undiluted magic. You know what electricity is? Power. Harnessed storm lightning. When you see that jagged forked lightning flash, that is – ’ he remembered the major’s idea of stuffing religion into the children – ‘that is God sending electricity to the earth. Oh, yes, we are all a little afraid of lightning – I can see you looking worried – but the sort of electricity we shall make is much milder. Instead of a great flood of electricity, we shall have a tiny trickle, just enough to power our electric clock – invented, by the way, by a Scot like myself, Alexander Bain. An Englishman, Wheatstone, also claims to have made one, but his was a very fancy version to do with electrical distribution of time – yes, you see, I can read in your faces it was much too fancy for the likes of us, ordinary folk, who want to see the practical application of such a thing.’

  ‘Let’s get this right, sergeant. We’re goin’ to make a clock,’ said one of the soldiers, ‘out of electric.’

  ‘Not out of electric, but powered by electric. Look, we need all sorts of bits and pieces to make the clock, then other bits and bobs to make the machine which will provide the electricity. Give me that slate,’ he said, taking one of the few slates available from a child in the front row, ‘I’ll write down what we need. If all of you can go out looking for these parts, we’ll have everything we need in no time. Now, first off we want to make a small windmill, so we’ll need material for the blades . . .’

  They crowded round him in great enthusiasm, even the two women, while he wrote the list. Soon each child, each adult, had memorized the bits they felt they could find without too much trouble, and they dispersed, all talking excitedly. Most of them had never owned a clock. Parents of ordinary families would send their children to the church, or to the market square, to look at the time on the public clocks, if they needed such exactness. Mostly people relied on the position of the sun in the sky, or the feel of the thing. If you were hungry, why then, it was around noon, surely? If there was no sun to go down in the evening, a cloud-filled day, then you waited until the light drained from the sky. More recently of course there had been these things called Time Tables issued by the railways, which told down to the very minute of the times that trains left stations, but most ordinary people were not touched by these.

  Crossman sat on the edge of a bench and hummed to himself. The classroom looked more like a chapel, now that it was empty. How strange it was to find himself a school teacher all of a sudden. He wasn’t half bad at it, either. Had taken to it like a duck to water. Look how they had suddenly become interested in learning. Everyone out, running around in the pursuit of knowledge! He would tell his mother in his next letter how he had inspired a whole band of men, women and children here in the Crimea, to go out and seek . . .

  ‘What the blue blazes are you about, sergeant?’ roared a voice from the doorway. ‘Come here you confounded man!’

  The silhouette was that of the adjutant.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir?’ replied Crossman in wounded tones. ‘I thought I was about my business of teaching.’

  ‘Teaching?’ fumed the major. ‘Teaching? Teaching what? They’re all running amuck, stealing everything they lay their hands on. Did I not tell you that the precise reason for having them in the classroom was to stop them thieving? And here you are encouraging this criminal behaviour, sending them out with that exact idea in mind.’ The major reached out beside him and hauled a grubby boy into view by the ear. ‘Now, tell me again, brat, what the sergeant told you to do.’

  ‘Go – go – forth and plunder, yer worship.’

  ‘Go forth and plunder,’ repeated the major with a growl. ‘What are you, sir, some kind of Faggin?’

  ‘I think you mean Fagin, major. The “a” is a long vowel. No, no, sir, I’m no corrupter of orphan’s morals. Not at all. You see, that phrase “Go out and plunder” was just a sort of figure of speech, to get them en
thused, to fill them with eagerness for the hunt. You see,’ he smiled at the major, ‘we’re making an electric clock.’

  The major’s eyes narrowed. ‘You dare to correct me, soldier? I’ll have those damn stripes. I’ll have you on the cannon. I’ll flay the bloody skin off your back. Electric clocks? Damn your eyes, sir. You’re here to teach ’em numbers not bloody high physics. Two and two, sir. Two and two. Electric clocks? I tell you this, if any more stores go missing you’ll pay for them out of your private’s pay, because you ain’t going to be drawing a sergeant’s pay any longer.’

  With that the major stormed off. Gradually, Crossman was able to reel in his charges, all returning excitedly with the bits and pieces he had sent them out to find. However, the clock, once they had finished, failed to work. Somehow they had trouble producing power, though Crossman felt it should be easy enough, since he had pored over drawings and written instructions in magazines when he was back in Britain. The hands – two pieces of coat hanger wire – failed to budge. Even when the class gave the device a nudge and finally a thump, time stood still.

  But everyone had had a great deal of fun and the whole exercise, so far as the class was concerned, had been far more interesting than learning arithmetic. A crucifix was removed from a window niche and the stillborn clock placed in its stead. It stood there unbowed and unapologetic. That the so-called ‘dynamo-electric machine’ had failed to jolt it into life was not its fault. The eyes of the class often wandered to it, when the current lesson was less than interesting, to rest there in pleasant speculation of what might have been.

  Crossman later went to the major to apologize and tried to explain again that he was attempting to put some interest into the lessons, so that the poor creatures on the benches did not drift away into a world of apathy. The major did not understand, but he accepted in the end that Crossman’s intentions had been pure. He withdrew his threat to ‘have Crossman’s stripes’ and told the sergeant to be more careful in future in the way he conducted his duties. Crossman, knowing that the major could not have demoted him anyway, quietly assured the old gentleman that it would never happen again.

  5

  ‘So, what’s to do? You’re some kind of school-ma’am now, eh sergeant?’

  ‘If you find it funny, Wynter, you might like to join my students at the chapel tomorrow. We’re going to learn to read.’

  Wynter glowered, first at the sergeant, then at Peterson, Gwilliams and Yorwarth, who were grinning broadly.

  ‘I can read as much as needs be,’ he snarled. ‘There’s nothin’ clever to reading.’

  ‘Oh, yes there is,’ Peterson said. ‘There’s everything clever to reading.’

  ‘Gwilliams,’ said Crossman, ‘upstairs, if you please.’

  Gwilliams followed Crossman dutifully up the narrow turning stone stairs into the small room above which served Crossman and Lovelace as a bedroom and an office. There was just enough space to put two mattresses with about six inches between, a Spanish chest owned by Lovelace, a single chair, and a jug and washbasin, also owned by the major. The major’s uniforms were hanging from nails on the wall: something he hated but was prepared to accept, since there was no room for a wardrobe in this small hovel’s second storey. This did not concern Crossman, who possessed only the uniform on his back.

  Lovelace also had a footlocker, which contained his civilian shooting clothes, a pair of shooting boots, and two matching double-pinfire Lefauchaux shotguns, custom made. He had first seen the Lefauchaux in the Paris Exhibition of ’51, where the new sporting gun had taken the world by storm, and had fallen instantly in love. Lovelace was a fickle gun man, however, and was apt to stray once the honeymoon was over. Already he was considering an affaire with a new shotgun that rumour had it was being developed by James Purdey, in England. If that happened the Lefauchaux would be used less and less, until one day they would find themselves offered as the stake in a wager or, worse still, relegated to a nephew with no real sporting flair.

  Cobwebs and dust abounded in the room and down the stairs. This did not bother either of the occupants, since neither was afraid of spiders (unlike Wynter and Peterson, who both went into fits of terror at the sight of one) and dust was an eternal problem solvable only by God, when the time came to salvage what was left on the earth after Judgement Day.

  ‘Sit down on my cot, Gwilliams. I’ll take the major’s.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Gwilliams pointed to a splintered hole in the floorboards.

  ‘That? Oh, mousehole I should think,’ replied Crossman.

  ‘Wasn’t it made by a Cossack’s musket ball? I heard about that.’ Gwilliams looked around the room. ‘Climbed in through that window at midnight, so I’m told. Blasted you in your bed. Only you wasn’t in your bed. You got out real quick when you heard a creak, just before the shot was fired and you killed him with a hunting knife, yelling, “Goddamn Don Cossacks, how dare you interrupt my sleep?” It’s almost a legend.’

  ‘Is that how legends are made? I always wondered. Actually, I didn’t kill him. I pinned him to the floor with the knife and left him. It was either Wynter or Peterson who finally shot him, as he tried to rip his foot from the floor. I think it was about two in the morning, but I agree midnight sounds much better. Things happen at midnight, don’t they? The crossover time, when witches and goblins are abroad. I’m not sure I said that bit about being asleep,’ but even as he confessed this, Crossman saw the look of disappointment on the face of Gwilliams and he decided that perhaps being the hero of a legend would be helpful to him in the Crimea. ‘I think my words were, “Wake me, damn you? I was dreaming of my lover.” And it was bloody Cossacks. Those blue devils are the toughest fighters on horseback. Oh, we’re more disciplined. We’re eager and proud, but those Cossacks have been on the backs of horses for several thousand years. They rode with Yermak and Genghis Khan. They’ve been mostly outlaws and fugitives in their time. Did you know that if for any reason a squadron of Cossacks were just to dismount and abandon their horses, the beasts would form themselves up in rows of six? It’s true. I’ve seen it. The men and their horses are part of each other, inseparable, magnificent together.’

  ‘So that was it? Dreaming of your lover? That’s real poetry, sergeant. Real poetry.’ Gwilliams picked up Major Lovelace’s razor from the top of the Spanish chest, opened it and studied the blade in the light from the small window. ‘Nice workmanship,’ he murmured. He closed it and looked down at the rest of the major’s kit. ‘Part of a gentleman’s matching set, eh? Hair brush, comb, scissors, strop – all jacketed in silver. God, I would be a gentleman too, if I had the money. Why not? To own a razor with a steel blade that good? Why not?’ He opened it again and stared along the edge. ‘See how it’s honed to perfection? You could cut through to the bone with one draw. I bet the major splits a hair in two before he uses it, eh?’

  Crossman laughed. ‘I do believe he does.’

  The razor was finally replaced and Gwilliams sat down. ‘You want to know about Enticknap? Nothing solid, yet. I got my suspicions though. I think he’s selling to the sutlers. Stores. Goods belonging to the army of Queen Victoria of England, God bless her little pointy chin . . .’

  ‘The United Kingdom,’ interrupted Crossman.

  ‘If you say so. United Kingdom. United States. We all like to be united, don’t we? Or maybe just some of us. Anyway, he’s selling government property. That’s what I’ve heard. He’s not the only one, of course. There are others doing the same. It can be a hobby.’

  ‘He’s the only one I’m interested in,’ said Crossman, quickly, in case he heard something about his own father. Much as he hated his father he did not want to learn he was a thief. Scandal in the family would touch everyone, not just Major Kirk. And despite everything, he did not want that.

  ‘Why a general? That’s what I ask myself. Don’t they have enough already, without risking their careers, their reputations? Then you gotta say no, they don’t. They never have enough. They’ve always got to
get more.’

  ‘You have the same jaundiced view of wealthy men as I have, Gwilliams.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s how they get that way.’

  ‘Many of them do absolutely nothing to get it. Don’t you have inherited wealth in the States? Many of them just wait until daddy dies and then they slip right into his shoes.’

  ‘I don’t blame ’em for that. Give me some, I say.’

  ‘I suppose I don’t either. Give me a fortune and I’d probably follow James Brooke, late of Widcombe Crescent, Bath.’

  ‘Who’s James Brooke?’

  ‘He was a young lieutenant who was severely wounded in India twenty-odd years ago, whose father died and left him wealthy. When he recovered from his near-death experience he bought a Royal Navy yacht and sailed to the Far East, where he cleared the seas of Dyak pirates and was invited to become the next rajah of Sarawak, in Borneo. There he now resides and rules three races, the Malays, the Chinese and the Dyaks, and is much respected for his impartiality and his thrifty life-style. Brooke offered the country to Queen Victoria, but she refused it.’

  ‘Why’d she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I believe it’s probably for the better. Rajah Brooke would have become governor, most likely, and as such would have had to report to and take orders from the British Government, who are excellent bunglers when it comes to managing foreign lands. As it is, he has no one to answer to but the people of Sarawak, and if he doesn’t like some European carpetbagger who is out to exploit the natives, he wraps him up and sends him off on the next boat leaving Kuching. Instead of being a governor he’s a king, and a rare one at that, a king who for the most part has his feet on the ground and his head firmly on his shoulders.’

  ‘By God, I should like an adventure like that. I should like to become king of a foreign land.’

  ‘Maybe you will, one day, Gwilliams,’ said Crossman, smiling. ‘There’s plenty of world left. For the most part I would just like to go there, to a place where the moon and stars are close enough to touch and the people are light of foot and light of heart.’