Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 3: Flashman at the Charge, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. George Fraser MacDonald
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lay pampering myself with a little preserved jellied chicken and Rhine wine – of which Willy’s store-chest yielded a fine abundance – that terrible day was approaching, that awful thunderclap of a day when the world turned upside down in a welter of powder-smoke and cannon-shot and steel, which no one who lived through it will ever forget. Myself least of all. I never thought that anything could make Alma or the Kabul retreat seem like a charabanc picnic, but that day did, and I was through it, dawn to dusk, as no other man was. It was sheer bad luck that it was the very day I returned to duty. Damn that Russian champagne; if it had kept me in bed just one day longer, what I’d have been spared. Mind you, we’d have lost India, for what that’s worth.
I had been up a day or two, riding a little up to the Balaclava Plain, and wondering if I was fit enough to look up Fan Duberly, and take up again the attempted seduction which had been so maddeningly frustrated in Wiltshire six years before. She’d ripened nicely, by what Lew said, and I hadn’t bestrode anything but a saddle since I’d left England – even the Turks didn’t fancy the Crim Tartar women, and anyway, I’d been ill. But I’d convalesced as long as I dared, and old Colin Campbell, who commanded in Balaclava, had dropped me a sour hint that I ought to be back with Raglan in the main camp up on the plateau. So on the evening of October 24 I got my orderly to assemble my gear, left Willy’s provisions with Russell, and loafed up to headquarters.
Whether I’d exerted myself too quickly, or it was the sound of the Russian bands in Sevastopol, playing their hellish doleful music, that kept me awake, I was taken damned ill in the night. My bowels were in a fearful state, I was blown out like a boiler, and I was unwise enough to treat myself with brandy, on the principle that if your guts are bad they won’t feel any worse for your being foxed. They do, though, and when my orderly suddenly tumbled me out before dawn, I felt as though I were about to give birth. I told him to go to the devil, but he insisted that Raglan wanted me, p.d.q., so I huddled into my clothes in the cold, shivering and rumbling and went to see what was up.
They were in a great sweat at Raglan’s post; word had come from Lucan’s cavalry that our advanced posts were signalling enemy in sight to the eastward, and gallopers were being sent off in all directions, with Raglan dictating messages over his shoulder while he and Airey pored over their maps.
“My dear Flashman,” says Raglan, when his eye lit on me, “why, you look positively unwell. I think you would be better in your berth.” He was all benevolent concern this morning – which was like him, of course. “Don’t you think he looks ill, Airey?” Airey agreed that I did, but muttered something about needing every staff rider we could muster, so Raglan tut-tutted and said he much regretted it, but he had a message for Campbell at Balaclava, and it would be a great kindness if I would bear it. (He really did talk like that, most of the time; consideration fairly oozed out of him.) I wondered if I should plead my belly, so to speak, but finding him in such a good mood, with the Willy business apparently forgotten, I gave him my brave, suffering smile, and pocketed his message, fool that I was.
I felt damned shaky as I hauled myself into the saddle, and resolved to take my time over the broken country that lay between headquarters and Balaclava. Indeed, I had to stop several times, and try to vomit, but it was no go, and I cantered on over the filthy road with its litter of old stretchers and broken equipment, until I came out on to the open ground some time after sunrise.
After the downpour of the night before, it was dawning into a beautiful clear morning, the kind of day when, if your innards aren’t heaving and squeaking, you feel like a fine gallop with the wind in your face. Before me the Balaclava Plain rolled away like a great grey-green blanket, and as I halted to have another unsuccessful retch, the scene that met my eyes was like a galloping field day. On the left of the plain, where it sloped up to the long line of the Causeway Heights, our cavalry were deployed in full strength, more than a thousand horsemen, like so many brilliant little puppets in the sunny distance, trotting in their squadrons, wheeling and reforming. About a mile away, nearest to me, I could easily distinguish the Light Brigade – the pink trousers of the Cherrypickers, the scarlet of Light Dragoons, and the blue tunics and twinkling lance-points of the 17th. The trumpets were tootling on the breeze, the words of command drifted across to me as clear as a bell, and even beyond the Lights I could see, closer in under the Causeway, and retiring slowly in my direction, the squadrons of the Heavy Brigade – the grey horses with their scarlet riders, the dark green of the Skins, and the hundreds of tiny glittering slivers of the sabres. It was for all the world like a green nursery carpet, with tiny toy soldiers deployed upon it, and as pretty as these pictures of reviews and parades that you see in the galleries.
Until you looked beyond, to where Causeway Heights faded into the haze of the eastern dawn, and you could see why our cavalry were retiring. The far slopes were black with scurrying ant-like figures – Russian infantry pouring up to the gun redoubts which we had established along the three miles of the Causeway; the thunder of cannon rolled continuously across the plain, the flashes of the Russian guns stabbing away at the redoubts, and the sparkle of their muskets was all along the far end of the Causeway. They were swarming over the gun emplacements, engulfing our Turkish gunners, and their artillery was pounding away towards our retreating cavalry, pushing it along under the shadow of the Heights.
I took all this in, and looked off across the plain to my right, where it sloped up into a crest protecting the Balaclava road. Along the crest there was a long line of scarlet figures, with dark green blobs where their legs should be – Campbell’s Highlanders, at a safe distance, thank God, from the Russian guns, which were now ranging nicely on the Heavy Brigade under the Heights. I could see the shot plumping just short of the horses, and hear the urgent bark of commands: a troop of the Skins scattered as a great column of earth leaped up among them, and then they reformed, trotting back under the lee of the Causeway.
Well, there was a mile of empty, unscathed plain between me and the Highlanders, so I galloped down towards them, keeping a wary eye on the distant artillery skirmish to my left. But before I’d got halfway to the crest I came on their outlying picket breakfasting round a fire in a little hollow, and who should I see but little Fanny Duberly, presiding over a frying-pan with half a dozen grinning Highlanders round her. She squealed at the sight of me, waving and shoving her pan aside; I swung down out of my saddle, bad belly and all, and would have embraced her, but she caught my hands at arms’ length. And then it was Harry and Fanny, and where have you sprung from, and all that nonsense and chatter, while she laughed and I beamed at her. She had grown prettier, I think, with her fair hair and blue eyes, and looked damned fetching in her neat riding habit. I longed to give her tits a squeeze, but couldn’t, with all those leering Highlanders nudging each other.
She had ridden up, she said, with Henry, her husband, who was in attendance on Lord Raglan, although I hadn’t seen him.
“Will there be a great battle to-day, Harry?” says she. “I am so glad Henry will be safely out of it, if there is. See yonder” – and she pointed across the plain towards the Heights – “where the Russians are coming. Is it not exciting? Why do the cavalry not charge them, Harry? Are you going to join them? Oh, I hope you will take care! Have you had any breakfast? My dear, you look so tired. Come and sit down, and share some of our haggis!”
If anything could have made me sick, it would have been that, but I explained that I hadn’t time to tattle, but must find Campbell. I promised to see her again, as soon as the present business was by, and advised her to clear off down to Balaclava as fast as she could go – it was astonishing, really, to see her picnicking there, as fresh as a May morning, and not much more than a mile away the Russian forces pounding away round the redoubts, and doubtless ready to sweep right ahead over the plain when they had regrouped.
The sergeant of Highlanders said Campbell was somewhere off with the Heavy Brigade, which was bad news, since it meant I must approach the firing, but there was nothing for it, so I galloped off north again, through the extended deployment of the Lights, who were now sitting at rest, watching the Heavies reforming. George Paget hailed me; he was sitting with one ankle cocked up on his saddle, puffing his cheroot, as usual.
“Have you come from Raglan?” cries he. “Where the hell are the infantry, do you know? We shall be sadly mauled at this rate, unless he moves soon. Look at the Heavies