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.
‘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