Soldiers in the Mist Read online

  ‘You do not speak my language at all well. What nationality are you?’

  ‘Je suis français,’ replied Crossman, without hesitation, seeing some Cossacks in the background. ‘A corporal in the Zouaves. I’m – I’m running away. I’ve had enough and my father is sick in a Marseille hospital. I need to get home.’

  Since his arrival in the Crimea and his recruitment into General Buller’s group of espionage agents and saboteurs, Crossman had been pursued by certain Cossacks. He had killed a number of the blue warriors in the course of his duties. A Greek spy for the Russians had given his name and rank to them, as the perpetrator of these deaths. Now they were looking for a Sergeant Crossman in the 88th Foot, the Connaught Rangers. It was better to be French.

  The Russian lieutenant switched easily to the French language.

  ‘A corporal in the Zouaves? Where is your uniform? How is it that you speak a little Russian?’

  ‘I speak a little of quite a few languages. Turkish, Russian, German – even a little English. I am a resourceful man.’

  The lieutenant finally removed the sword point from Crossman’s throat.

  ‘And where is this resourceful deserter going?’

  ‘Home,’ replied Crossman. ‘To France.’

  ‘You are walking back to France?’

  Crossman grinned. ‘I don’t have any other alternative. They wouldn’t let me have a horse. I’m a foot soldier, as you can see. I was hoping to get a ship somewhere up the coast. Perhaps you can give me the name of a good cargo vessel, bound for the Mediterranean. I live in Marseille.’

  ‘So you said.’

  Crossman bit his tongue. He was overdoing it. He was not yet good at subterfuge and deceit.

  The Russian spoke again. ‘You must be a sailor to speak so many languages.’

  ‘I’m no sailor. I don’t speak them fluently. I have simply heard them in the waterfront cafés of Marseille. May I go now?’

  The lieutenant turned to his men and repeated the last sentence in Russian. Now they roared with laughter. Soldiers came forward and prodded him with their bayonets. Then he was herded, out of the cover of the rock hang and down the hillside. Here he saw with astonishment that there was a whole army on the march. At least two divisions. He noticed by their insignia they were from Odessa – the 4th Army Corps.

  The 4th Corps! Heading towards the Russian Army now camped on the Heights of Inkerman. Something was in the wind. A fresh assault by the Russians?

  2

  Crossman underwent a perfunctory search for weapons and was then bullied into a scramble down the slope. When he reached the bottom he tripped and rolled over in the dirt. His sheepskin flew open to expose his British Army coatee. The lieutenant who had captured him rushed forward and shouted an order to two soldiers. They tore the sheepskin from Crossman’s back revealing the now purple coatee and its faded sergeant’s chevrons. When he objected he received a rifle butt on the cheekbone, making him reel back and spit blood.

  ‘A French deserter?’ shouted the officer in his face. ‘I think not. I think you are British.’

  ‘British, French,’ muttered Crossman, taking back his sheepskin coat and putting it on again, ‘what difference does it make? I’m a deserter.’

  ‘Perhaps not, perhaps not. There is talk of a British sergeant who has given us a great deal of trouble. A spy and saboteur. Our people are looking for such a person. You may be he.’

  Crossman shook his head. ‘I try to give no man trouble.’

  ‘How is it,’ continued the officer, now drawing other officers to the scene, ‘that you speak good French? A sergeant in the British Army? This is unlikely, is it not? I think you are the spy.’

  An infantry captain drew his sword and stepped forward. He said something in Russian to the two soldiers standing near him. They reached out and each took one of Crossman’s arms. The sergeant was forced into a kneeling position with his arms bent painfully behind his back like two open wings of an angel. He realised now he was about to be executed. The captain was going to decapitate him with his sword.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Crossman in French. ‘I can be of use. I – I know the disposition of our army.’

  Crossman was desperately trying to buy some time. It did not matter what he told them. He could make it up. They were surely fresh from the Russian hinterland. They would know very little about the situation here in the Crimea. It seemed he was wrong about this however, for the lieutenant standing beside the captain laughed.

  ‘You think we do not have our spies too? What is there to know? That you have your battalions stretched thinly from Balaclava to Sebastopol? And that you have the French Army on your left covering the Chersonese Uplands? Let me tell you that the French and British Headquarters both lie five miles directly south of Sebastopol and that the camps of your depleted cavalry units are to the right and rear of your so-called siege line. What more can you tell me, sergeant?’

  Despair filled Crossman. He knew he was about to die and he was terribly afraid. He was a young man with a stout heart, but waiting for a sword to descend upon one’s neck was enough to fill the bravest soldier with terror. At the last moment he looked up, to see the sword poised. There was fear on the face of the man who wielded the weapon too, and the guards who held Crossman looked on in horror. An execution is no easy task for any man with feelings in his breast.

  Suddenly, there was a shout. A red-faced colonel rode forward on his horse, barking an order. The captain let his sword arm fall by his side. For the moment at least, Crossman was reprieved. He let out a short sob of relief. The two soldiers pulled him to his feet as the colonel rode up.

  Crossman stared up into the fat red face with its huge, white, bristling moustaches. The man stared down at him, keenly searching his face. Then another order was barked and the colonel rode off to the front of the corps, which was now on its feet and preparing to march.

  ‘You have been given a short while to live,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Our colonel wishes to question you.’

  ‘I told you I had information about the disposition of our troops.’

  ‘Bah!’ scoffed the lieutenant. ‘We can find out all about that from The Times newspaper. Our best spies are your war correspondents. What my colonel wishes to know is whether your soldiers have any heart left, after we smashed you at Balaclava . . .’

  ‘You didn’t smash us,’ replied Crossman, angrily. ‘We held you.’

  ‘Yes, but at what cost? You have lost your precious Light Brigade. We took many of your guns. We captured your redoubts on the heights overlooking the Woronzoff Road. Your generals are in disarray, arguing amongst themselves, not wishing to speak with the French whom they regard as an old enemy, and not wishing to use the Turks whom they believe failed them at Balaclava. You see, we know everything.’

  ‘What’s my grandmother’s name?’ snapped Crossman, as his hands were bound behind him.

  ‘What? Don’t be foolish.’

  ‘You see,’ he sneered at the lieutenant, ‘you don’t know everything.’

  The lieutenant’s face went stiff and formal.

  ‘So, this is the famous British humour we hear about – it is not funny at all.’

  ‘It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a put down.’

  ‘I do not understand this gibberish.’

  Crossman was led away on the end of a leash attached to his hands. The two guards assigned to look after him were young men with peasant faces. They seemed pleasant enough, not like the guards he had had when he had been captured on a mission in Sebastopol. They had beaten him to within a shade of his life. One of them smiled shyly at him with worried crinkled eyes as he studied the man’s face. Crossman had no doubt these young men were as apprehensive as any soldier in a war.

  Towards evening, the march stopped and the Russian corps made camp. No tents went up and no fires were lit. They simply formed huddled rings around stacked rifles, while sentries were posted on the periphery.

  His hands untied, Cross
man was taken to the red-faced colonel. The young lieutenant was there, looking immaculate. He also looked pleased with himself. No doubt he would have been given credit for Crossman’s capture. Something to write home about to his aristocratic family in St Petersburg or Moscow or one of the other cities in his vast country.

  Crossman too came from aristocracy: a fact he preferred to put behind him. He hated his father, a major in the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders, for seducing his mother and leaving her to die unmarried and alone. It was the reason for him being in the ranks, under an assumed name.

  The colonel, who like most aristocrats also spoke French, asked Crossman some pertinent questions.

  ‘Why are you dressed in a Frenchman’s jacket?’

  ‘It’s warm. I purchased it from a French soldier, who had taken it from the body of a friend who fell in battle.’

  The colonel snorted. ‘You rob your own dead?’

  ‘I understood the money was to go to the dead soldier’s widow.’

  There was a nod of approval from the colonel.

  ‘And the money for that Russian headgear you wear? Is that to go to the widow of the soldier who owned it?’

  Crossman looked a little shamefaced.

  ‘I admit I stole this fur hat.’

  Again, another nod. ‘You know what I think? I think you buy and steal clothes because the British Army does not supply its own troops with such items. I think your great Army of the East is in chaos. Admit to me. The men are dispirited, are they not? Their morale is low, they are under-provisioned, they die of sickness in the siege trenches, they freeze on cold nights, they have nothing left in them with which to fight?’

  Crossman would have liked to argue all points with the colonel, but he did not, instead he confined himself to the last part of the question.

  ‘A British soldier will always have something in him with which to fight.’

  The lieutenant standing behind Crossman snorted with mirth. But the colonel merely stared into Crossman’s eyes, seeking some sort of truth.

  Then he said, ‘I think you know your army is at a low ebb, far from home, its faith in its leaders gone. The cholera is killing you by the hundred. Your cholera belts are no protection against this deadly disease. I think you know you are finished.’

  ‘Then I must know it, if you think so.’

  ‘I do, I do. I am sorry for the common soldier. You should have come after us when we retreated from the Alma. You should have gone into Sebastopol immediately. Your leaders are making too many mistakes, costing many lives. Now we have our defences and a stronger army building. We will destroy you all and send the survivors home to a nation in sorrow.’

  Crossman shrugged. ‘If you think so.’

  ‘I do, I do.’

  After this interview, Crossman was led away by his guards and his hands were retied behind his back. His ankles were also bound this time, since there was no marching to do. He was made to sit with his back against a boulder. A kind of peace settled down over the area, though the sound of distant guns both from the city and the allied armies punched at the hollow sky.

  Gradually men fell asleep all around. A Russian soldier’s uniform, unlike that of a British soldier, was full and warm. They were not even issued blankets, their thick greatcoats serving that function. Finally only one of Crossman’s two guards remained awake. He was staring into the middle distance, not paying very much attention to his prisoner, who he believed to be secure.

  Indeed, Crossman himself felt helpless. The ropes were tight around his wrists. And while his ankles were bound he could not creep away into the night. He tried scraping his bonds against the boulder, but they remained secure and unyielding under his efforts. After looking up at the stars for a while, he too dropped into a doze.

  At around two o’clock in the morning he suddenly woke to feel someone slicing through his bonds. Glancing behind him he saw the rotund shape of a man using a sharp knife. Quickly he looked at the two guards. Both were asleep now, one sitting hunched over his musket, the other with his back against the same rock against which Crossman was propped.

  The bits of rope dropped away. The knife was pressed into his right hand. He swiftly cut through the cords around his ankles. When he looked up he saw his rescuer was just about to slit the throat of the soldier closest to him. Crossman gripped the man’s wrist and shook his head. The man shrugged and the pair of them then sneaked away into the darkness.

  The man who had saved Crossman from what would surely have been a summary execution, was Yusuf Ali, the Bashi-Bazouk with whom Crossman had shared many missions, many fox hunts. The sergeant did not pause now to ask why the Turk was there, but simply followed him as he snaked through the tall grass between two Russian sentries. Once they were safe in the hills however, Crossman asked the obvious questions.

  ‘What are you doing here, Ali?’

  ‘I follow you,’ replied the Turk, wiping mud from the blade of his knife on to his red pantaloons. ‘You go without me!’

  This last sentence was uttered in an incriminating tone.

  ‘I was ordered to go alone. You should not have come.’

  ‘Ha – I no come, you be dead in the morning.’

  That was true enough. ‘You saw me leave then?’

  ‘I walk with Mr Jarrard. We both see you go off into the hills. I follow you.’

  ‘Rupert Jarrard saw me leave too? What kind of spy am I? The whole allied army must have watched me go.’

  It was distressing, considering the nature of the fox hunt.

  ‘No – just me and Mr Jarrard.’

  Jarrard was an American war correspondent and Crossman’s particular friend. The two had a lot in common – an interest in modern inventions and discoveries, a dislike of the aristocracy, a keen appreciation of beautiful women – and they spent time together discussing these things when they could. Crossman wondered whether Rupert would approve of assassinating traitors without a trial. Knowing the man, he thought not.

  Yusuf Ali, ever practical, now asked, ‘You lose your weapons?’

  Crossman shook his head. ‘My revolver is in a hidden pocket in the hem of my sheepskin coat and my knife is where any self-respecting Scotsman keeps his sgian dubh – in the top of my hose.’

  ‘They not search you?’ asked the Bashi-Bazouk in surprise.

  ‘They did – but badly.’

  ‘Where we go now?’

  Crossman set his mouth in a firm line.

  ‘I am going north, but you are going back to Major Lovelace. It’s no good shaking your head like that, Ali – you must. Someone must tell our generals that Sebastopol is being reinforced with new troops. It’s my belief they’re about to make another assault on our lines. The information needs to get back. Tell Major Lovelace that the 4th Army Corps from Odessa is on the move towards Sebastopol and will be there tomorrow.’

  ‘I go with you,’ said Ali, stubbornly.

  ‘Please, Ali, don’t argue with me on this. Come out after me if you like once you’ve delivered the message, but someone must go back and I have an unpleasant job to do.’

  The Bashi-Bazouk scratched his brow under his turban, and then finally nodded.

  ‘I go.’

  3

  It was a blood-red dawn which rose over the eastern hills. Crossman lay in a hollow on a rise above Mackenzies Farm and watched the sunrise. It was a beautiful sight. Normally he was too cold and wet, too weary to appreciate such things, but this morning there was no rain and he was out of the wind. He could afford to let his mind wander on poetic lines.

  Lavinia Durham would like such a dawn. Perhaps she was watching it at that very moment, from her little house in Kadikoi? Crossman had not spoken with her since the duel between her husband and Lieutenant Dalton-James. Crossman had managed to avert any bloodshed on that occasion. Just as a joke, Crossman had led the lieutenant to the belief that Lavinia Durham had requested a tryst with him, but the whole episode had unfortunately turned nasty. Crossman felt doubly guilty, since he
had been the one having an affair with Mrs Durham, a sweetheart of his before she was ever married to the quartermaster, Captain Durham.

  He was not proud of his behaviour, even though he had been under the influence of pain-killing laudanum at the time. In point of fact, Lavinia and he had effectively been laying an old ghost to rest.

  Something was happening in the farm below – a lamp had been lighted – and Crossman’s mind was yanked back to the task in hand.

  His 5-shot Tranter revolver was in his hand, ready to kill the man who walked or rode up to the farmhouse. It was not a chore he relished, this cold-blooded murder without any real sort of proof or any kind of trial.

  What if someone quite innocent of any wrongdoing were to be there first? Perhaps an employee of the farmer, who lived in one of the outlying villages? Or the real traitor did not turn up, but decided to deliver his information elsewhere, and another man by coincidence happened to be passing the farmhouse on his way to another location?

  Crossman’s palms were sweating. This was ugly work. There might even be retribution later. What if Major Lovelace were killed in battle? There was no written order in Crossman’s possession. Only the word of an officer. If Crossman were accused at a later date of committing what was in truth a crime, there would be no one willing to stand up for him. A few, his enemies, would wallow in his downfall.

  This was of course the worst scenario, but in times of stress such outcomes did not seem unlikely.

  A figure was coming up from the south on foot, heading towards the farm! It seemed the man wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible, for he kept to the shadows of the hills, skulking in the half-light, constantly looking about him as if he expected to be followed. A child could not have looked more guilty, sneaking down to the pantry at night.

  Crossman checked his pocket watch. It was just coming up to six o’clock.

  The sergeant saw that the man would pass an outcrop of rocks, and he slipped silently down the slope to position himself behind those boulders. When the traitor passed that spot all Crossman would have to do would be to step out and shoot him in the head at point-blank range, then drift back into the hills again before anyone from the farm could investigate. Crossman knew he should use the hunting knife, silently and swiftly, but he did not trust himself to kill instantaneously. Even a traitor deserved to be executed without a lingering death.