PATRICK MERCER

To Do and Die

To Do and Die is dedicated to “The Pack”

Table of Contents

Chapter One - The Battle of the River Alma

Chapter Two - Glassdrumman

Chapter Three - Weedon Barracks

Chapter Four - Bulganak

Chapter Five - Alma to Balaklava

Chapter Six - Balaklava

Chapter Seven - Little Inkermann

Chapter Eight - Eve of Inkermann

Chapter Nine - Dawn at Inkermann

Chapter Ten - The Sandbag Battery

Chapter Eleven - Wounded

Chapter Twelve - The Raid

Chapter Thirteen - Out of the Line

Chapter Fourteen - The Quarries

Chapter Fifteen - Victory

Glossary

Historical Note

Author Note

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE The Battle of the River Alma

The chaffing and laughter stopped abruptly: shallow jokes were choked off as the troops listened intently. Every bristle-chinned man in the long, snaking ranks sweated gently into his scarlet coat, shoulders bowed under his load of kit and ammunition, hands cupped around his rifle as he strained to hear the order that would start the killing. The warm, late September breeze carried the snapping and popping of the burning village of Bourliouk to their front clearly now as every voice was stilled, then the captains stumbled over the furrows of the vineyards clutching at swords and haversacks, rushing to be first to give the order to their men. The soldierly form of Captain Eddington, their company commander, stood before them, trim, athletic, just a slight flush on his face betraying the excitement of imminent action. The run had left him almost out of breath: he fought hard to steady his voice.

‘With ball cartridge … load!’

Eddington was crisp, exact, almost elegant compared with the brass-lunged non-commissioned officers who repeated his orders. Young Anthony Morgan did his best to conquer his suddenly dry throat, to stop himself sounding too Irish and utter the same command that, if truth were known, he had never really expected to say on the field of battle. Here he was, twenty-three and the junior subaltern of the 95th Foot's Grenadier Company, about to see war for the first time and acting as if he'd never heard the words of the drill manual before.

Almost as one, the troops spat out the cartridge paper, then the line sang as ramrods forced home the bullets that were about as big as the end of your thumb. Rifles were pulled sharply back to the order before a gulp swept down the lines – there could be no turning back now. With all forty rounds untied and ready for use in their pouches and hands sticky with sweat on the stocks of their weapons, every man knew that the browny-grey blocks of Russian infantry looking down at them on the other bank of the sluggish Alma had to be faced.

‘Officers, to me,’ Eddington shouted. Both of his subalterns, Richard Carmichael and Anthony Morgan ran from their places by their men to the front of the company.

‘Right, you two, the plan's simple …’ Eddington turned and pointed across the river towards the Great Redoubt, the earthwork at the centre of the Russian position, howitzer barrels just visible, pointing menacingly towards the waiting, British ranks. ‘The French will turn the right of the Russian position whilst we go straight at them here, across the river Alma, to take that Redoubt. The Light Division are on our left, Adams's Brigade on our right; Cambridge's Guards are to the rear, in reserve. Once the firing starts it'll be all smoke and chaos, I guess, so if you get confused, just look to the centre of the Regiment where the Colours are. Any questions?’ Despite the invitation, Eddington – quite evidently – felt that everything was as clear as it needed to be.

Neither subalterns dared ask anything, merely shaking their heads in reply.

‘Right…’ Eddington shook both of his officers' hands quickly. ‘Back to your men, remember how much they'll depend on you.’ Then, less stiffly, ‘Good luck,’ before both young men strode back to their places at either end of the Grenadier Company.

The river twisted and coiled between low banks on the northern side and higher ones to the south, then a little shelf gave way to a short, steep climb before the land sloped gently, smoothly up to the enemy positions. The Russian commander – Menschikoff – had given his divisional and regimental officers, in this part of the field at least, all the freedom they needed to plan this position and Morgan could see that they had been thorough. When they had paused at Scutari on their way to the Crimea, they'd visited their own artillery and been told that the most lethal range for guns against infantry was about six hundred paces. He looked up to the brass muzzles that peeped down through the embrasures over clear slopes where no vines grew and the only trees were a dotted line of scrawny poplars along the course of the river: they were about six hundred paces away.

Morgan was just able to make out the far-off rattle of drums before the first shot rasped overhead – he'd never heard that sound before: now his guts and arse tightened – just as the veterans had said. Judging by the way that the whole company ducked, there were another eighty-odd spincters doing just the same and he fought with himself to look the men in the face and not to turn and stare at the guns whose smoke now roiled across the hillside. The round shot had still to find their mark when the commanding officer cantered forward, his own nervousness carrying to his horse – the animal pecked and sidestepped as the balls shivered through the air.

‘Ninety-Fifth will advance … by the centre, quick march!’ Colonel Webber-Smith's words were echoed down the companies and the regiment billowed forward.

But this certainty was to be short lived – they stuttered to a halt no more than three hundred yards further on.

‘Bloody Seventh, just a bunch o' bairns.’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken was one of the few Scots in the regiment. He'd transferred from the 36th a few years ago and, at six-foot and as hard as a Glasgow winter he'd soon found himself in his new regiment's hand-picked Grenadiers. Now, he damned the battalion to their left whose cursing ranks had first collided with their own and then caused them to pause and have to be untangled.

They'd never made friends with the “Old 7th” as they called themselves, for these boys had seen no more active service than the 95th, but they would never stop bragging about their lineage and history. The 7th Fusiliers came from the Light Division – the left assault division – and there had been friction between the two regiments ever since the pause at Varna; now an uneasy file of them tramped past, all downy, half-grown beards and haphazard firewood sticking out of their blanket packs. They looked just a little too fixedly ahead, their stares pleading their innocence for this officer-botch that made them seem so clumsy in front of a “young” regiment. Then the earth spurted momentarily just ahead of them and half a dozen sprawled on the ground, as if felled by some mighty scythe. A brightly-painted drum bounced, a rifle now bent like a hairpin cartwheeled away and one of the 7th sagged, his clothes, belts and blanket awry.

Morgan saw how the jagged iron shards had caught the lad, for a furrow the length of a man's finger had been opened below his ear, yet he felt nothing more than curiosity. Bruised, dark-purple ribbons of chopped flesh laced his neck as black, arterial blood soaked his collar and cross-belts, dripping into the soft earth next to his dead face.

A further soldier sat plucking dumbly at gouges on his wrists and hands. Coins from another's pocket had been hit and hurled by a ball as lethally as any shrapnel, slashing and scoring the man like meat on a butcher's slab.

The gunners now had the range. The smoke from blazing Bourliok helped to hide them a little, but in almost perfect unison shells burst above them and the 55th to their right, hurling jagged iron and shrapnel balls into the redcoated ranks below. From all around came screams and moans as the men fell with ugly punctures to their shoulders and heads whilst splinters bounced off rifles, wrenching them from fear-damp hands.

Then Pegg was pitched heavily onto his face by a crack and angry burst of smoke above them, drumsticks, belts and shako anywhere. At seventeen, Drummer Pegg was the youngest man in the company – now he was their first casualty.

‘You two, help Pegg. One of you get his drum and sticks, sharp now.’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken saw the lad being dashed down, but before the others could get to him, Pegg was on his feet, ashen but gingerly feeling himself for wounds.

‘You all right, son?’

‘Fucked if I know, Colour-Sar'nt, I think so.’ Pegg continued to investigate himself bemusedly.

‘You're a right lucky little bugger, yous: get your kit and stop sitting down on the job, then.’ A shaky grin played over Pegg's face as he chased his drum, oblivious to the great gash in the blanket strapped to his back.

As the fire intensified so the dense smoke from the village blew straight across the face of the company. Order began to be lost as the men looked for solid cover in the lee of farm walls and byres, eyes stinging and coughing as they did so. Morgan just didn't know whether he should try to restore some form of regularity to the ranks or continue to let the men find their own shelter as they had been taught in the new style of skirmishing. But he had little choice, as the jarring noise of the shells joined with the swirling smoke to make close-order impossible.

Then, emerging from behind a low farm wall came the senior subaltern of the Grenadiers, Richard Carmichael, but he was not his usual poised Harrovian self. Whilst his scarlet coat and great, bullion shoulder wings, even his rolled blanket, haversack and water-bottle still hung like a tailor's plate, there was an unusual distraction about him. He darted hunted looks everywhere, he was pallid, he licked his lips, his self-assured serenity seemed to have been scraped away by the first shot.

‘Carmichael, where's Eddington?’ bellowed Morgan, but only on the third time of asking did Carmichael reply.

‘I … I don't know. The company's all to blazes, I shall go and find him.’ He shrank back behind a protective piece of brickwork.

To their front, the Light Company was fleetingly visible, thrown out in skirmish line to screen the rest of the Regiment. Morgan now realized the popping that he'd heard amidst the artillery was their rifles replying to bangs and puffs of smoke that came from the scatter of buildings and bushes that marked the outskirts of the burning village. The Russians would certainly have their own sharpshooters this side of the river, hidden, he supposed, amidst the scrub and huts, but none was to be seen.

A scrawny little corporal – a Dublin enlistment whose name Morgan had never managed to learn – emerged with another Light Company man from the smoke. Both had thrown off their tall black shakoes and folded down the collars of their coatees: now their rifles were half in the shoulder whilst they peered intently into a tangle of walls and vines as if a rabbit were about to bolt. He couldn't make out what they were calling to one another above the din of the guns, but suddenly both rifles fired almost together and uncertain grins showed that they'd found a mark.

The corporal, peering through the reek, recognized the wings at Morgan's shoulder as those of an officer and sent the private to report to him. This was another lad whom he knew but couldn't name; even as he stumbled through the smoke and over the loose earth of the vineyard he reached behind his hip to get a fresh cartridge. The nameless soldier's lips were smeared with powder sticking to his stubble showing, Morgan noticed enviously, that he'd already been plying his trade and there was a slight swagger about the man, his manner as unlike the parade ground as his once-white belts were grimy.

‘Sir, Corporal McElver says to say that we got a couple on 'em, but there's still Russ in the buildings and what do you want us to do now?’ How like the men to ask the first officer they saw for orders.

Just as he was groping for something useful to say, the soldier staggered, his head jerking sharply – his weapon fell as he sat down heavily at Morgan's feet, clutching at his mouth. Blood welled between his fingers from a hole in his cheek whilst into his palm he spat a wad of pulp and broken teeth. It was all that Morgan could do to stop himself from dropping down to help the man – but the wounded would be dealt with by medical orderlies – his job was to lead the troops forward to find the enemy.

A gout of smoke and a flicker of movement, though, showed where the Russian sharpshooter had fired from above a wall no more than twenty yards away. All that Morgan wanted to do was to sink into the damp soil beside the casualty, but the unspoken challenges of his men were too strong. Trying to hold his equipment steady with one hand, he gripped the hilt of his sword as he stumbled over the broken ground whilst, he was sure, a hundred judgemental eyes bore into him.

‘Sir, wait… let me get some lads together to flush the bastard out, don't you go by yourself …’ But McGucken's words went unheard as Morgan scrambled forwards.

A thin cloud of powder-smoke still hung over the low wall as he tried to vault it, but the top stones were loose and in one ugly, tripping crash, he bundled straight into someone crouched on the other side. The Russian rifleman had been concentrating on reloading his weapon and sprawled beneath Morgan's inelegant arrival, giving the officer just enough time to regain his balance.

Pulling his cap from his eyes and his equipment from around his groin, Morgan instinctively brought his sword around his shoulder to slash at his foe, but the once balanced, tempered blade now sagged like a felling axe – the thrill of action had immediately sapped him of all his strength. Just as he was bracing himself to strike, he remembered the advice dinned into him – always to use the point, but in changing his blow, he gave the Russian time to slither back half a pace through the slime of the yard and he over-reached himself. What should have been a decisive swipe turned into a half-spent prod that did no more than tear the cloth of his enemy's coat and cause a yelp, more of surprise than pain, whilst the young Russian recovered fast, his scrappy moustache sticking wetly to his lips. Without a rifle, he grabbed at Morgan's hilt, wresting the blade from his hand and pulling him off balance through the sword knot that still looped it to his wrist.

The boy was big and bulky in his coarse, grey greatcoat and Morgan had spent enough time in the ring to know that if he were to win he had to use every ounce of weight and strength in his muscular five-foot ten and use it quickly. But this fight was in deadly earnest, it wasn't school or regimental boxing, just cuts and nosebleeds; this time one of them would die. As he was pulled forward so he let his full weight barrel into his opponent and in an instant both men were rolling on the ground. Then blinding pain and a blast of stagnant breath – Morgan got the full benefit of the Muscovite's fist square on the bridge of his nose. He reeled back as his enemy's weight was swiftly on top of him.

The pain in his face still raged when his ears, already roaring as the blood pumped round his system, almost split. Then his bruised nose was filled with the smell of powder-smoke and the Russian ceased to struggle. Thrusting the dead burden away from him, Morgan leapt to his feet, groping for his sword that dangled by his hand and desperately trying to rid himself of the stranglehold of the coat around his shoulder.

Standing above him was his Colour-Sergeant – McGucken. He'd judged the shot well, for the powerful Minié round could have easily passed through the Russian's body and hurt Morgan. Now, as if he did such things every day of the week, the Scot was finishing the job. He jabbed viciously with his brass-capped rifle-butt straight into the Russian's face, cracking open the nose, splintering the sinus bones, reducing the flesh to a mass of purple bruises. Finally, he stood astride the body and split the skull with one great blow and a curse.

‘That'll teach yous …’ before turning, lungs heaving, to Morgan. ‘Sir, will you please stop fannying around? Never do that again – always take an escort, I don't need you cold.’ McGucken had to yell above the noise to be heard, but there was no mistaking his anger and concern for the young officer. ‘And get rid of that pox-ridden coat, sir.’ McGucken was scraping the butt of his rifle along the coarse grass to clean the bloody mess away.

Plunging into the smoke after McGucken, Morgan found the wounded Light Company soldier propped against a mossy wall whilst two bandsmen and a girl were doing their best to bandage the awkward mouth wound without suffocating the man. A great stain spread on the snowy gauze being inexpertly bound around his jaw whilst blood bubbled from his nose.

‘Mary Keenan, what in God's name are you doing this far forward?’ That his former chambermaid and wife of his batman came to be in the Crimea at all still amazed him. Now the same Mary that had changed his linen, served at table and become closer to him than any other person on earth, was crouching next to the casualty, proffering a useless canteen of spirits. The smallest pair of soldier's boots jutted from below her muddy hem whilst the dark hair that Morgan remembered so well running through his hands was plaited neatly below a scarf.

‘Have a care Mr Morgan, sir, it's Mrs Keenan to you.’ Despite the sharpness of the reply, her eyes were wide with fear, but there was still the same resolute glitter in them that he had seen so often at his family's house, Glassdrumman, in County Cork. There was a determination in this woman that, despite her nineteen years, had seen her become the unelected leader of the handful of regimental wives who had been allowed to accompany the Regiment on campaign.

‘I'm sorry – Mrs Keenan. But you're too far forward, please get to the rear.’ Morgan noticed how her fingers trembled.

‘I … I'll be fine, thank you, sir.’ Despite the stuttered formality of her words, Morgan couldn't fail to notice the hand that caught at his sleeve.

‘Sir, for God's sake come on.’ McGucken recalled him to his duty.

All the companies were now stumbling for the lee of the riverbank. The dashing, bounding balls could not reach them here and they were invisible to the gunners, but confusion reigned as men from the regiments of the Light Division plunged off the banks and into the river in an effort to reach the sheltering lip of the opposite bank.

‘You lot, keep your pouches above your heads …’ McGucken was doing his best to stop his men from soaking their ammunition by plunging thoughtlessly into the river. ‘NCOs, get the men to keep their weapons dry.’

Some of the sergeants and corporals heard the Colour-Sergeant and understood him amidst the chaos. A handful of the soldiers, numbed by the noise and fear, had to be grabbed to make them listen, their belts undone for them, their rifles lifted above their heads as splinters and bullets churned up the water.

The few mounted officers urged their chargers into the breast-deep stream. Beach, commanding the 33rd, spurred his dripping little grey mare directly at the bank, but she slithered back, mud staining her knees. He tried again, riding her obliquely up the greasy slope, picking firmer ground in a fine display of horsemanship. Silhouetted on the higher ground for an instant, Morgan saw the 33rd's colonel rousing his men: then the saddle was emptied by a sudden blast of iron as the Russians fired their first rounds of shotgun-like canister.

Below the lip the regiments teemed. The 7th Fusiliers were astounded by the abandon of their commanding officer – Colonel Lacy Yea. ‘Come on, come on anyhow!’ he yelled as his horse, too, wallowed at the bank. The knotted line – muddy red coats, smeared white belts and dark, sodden trousers – now raised a breathless cheer and surged up the rise.

The two ensigns had floundered through the river keeping the 95th's Colours almost dry. A subaltern wrung at one corner of the bright yellow regimental standard as they looked for their commanding officer and gathered themselves for the waiting storm.

‘So, that's where you've got to, Morgan.’ From somewhere in the smoke Eddington was suddenly at his side, ‘The Colonel's been wounded – I saw him being carried to the rear back there in the vineyards – along with half the other commanding officers in the Division, as far as I can see. Major Hume's in charge, now, but he had a bad fall when his horse was shot.’ Eddington was looking round in the smoke and crowd of soldiers from every regiment who were splashing into the river, seeking the cover of the bank. ‘Where's Carmichael and his half of the company?’ Even though he had to shout to make himself heard, there was something reassuring about Eddington's calmness. It was as though he had been born to this confusion, that the shriek of balls and shrapnel was a normal part of his life: he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Just as he asked, a clutch of their men under Sergeant Ormond came stumbling through the smoke and vines. To their rear and hunched in a curious half-crouch came Carmichael, but his shako and coat had gone, his legs and bottom were covered in mud whilst his normally well-combed hair was everywhere. When he saw his company commander his face lit-up with relief.

‘Well done, Sergeant Ormond, I see you've brought Mr Carmichael with you,’ shouted Captain Eddington.

Morgan smiled to himself. It was Sergeant Ormond and the men who should have been led by Lieutenant Carmichael, not the other way round, but just as Eddington turned to tell Carmichael what to do, a great, thirty two pound ball skidded muddily off the far bank of the river before hitting him squarely in the nape of the neck. One moment Eddington had a head – the next he had not. So cleanly had the iron done its work that the Captain's body was upright for an instant, the trunk spurting blood in a liquid rope, before the knees crumpled and the corpse fell in a shrunken bundle of rags and straps onto the riverbank.

‘Dear God!’ shrieked Carmichael, clear above the surrounding noise. He'd been within feet of Eddington when the ball struck, now he was spattered with his blood and matter. A file of their Grenadiers led by a lance-corporal picked up the hysteria in Carmichael's voice and now they edged uneasily by, trying not to catch his eye.

‘Christ, Morgan, Eddington's dead … look.’ Morgan was as appalled by the decapitated horror that had been their Captain as Carmichael was, but he knew that they must not let the men see their officers' fear.

‘That would certainly seem to be the case.’ Morgan was surprised, impressed even, by his own sangfroid. ‘You're in charge now. What do you want me to do?’ He turned to encourage a young non-commissioned officer; ‘Corporal Aldworth, well done, get those men down the bank.’

‘Just… get on, just… get across to Major Hume and report to him. I'll … I'll go and look for the others.’ Carmichael slipped off to the rear, enveloped by the smoke before Morgan could remind him of his duty.

Hundreds of urgent feet had churned the bank of the river, making it hard to stay upright. He slopped into the mud, forced through the water, pistol, sword and haversack as far above his waist as their various straps would allow, watching Hume and the Colour party. The fall from his horse didn't seem to have unsettled Hume, for now he stretched his arms out behind the young ensigns' backs, gently urging them on, uttering calm words of encouragement to the knot of frightened men around the Colours.

With the two Colour-Sergeants alongside, the little band ducked their chins and braced their shoulders as if to face a gale as they slithered up the bank. The advance through the vineyard had been mild compared to this, for as the line of dripping troops thickened on the bare slope directly below the Russian guns, so their enemies increased the fire. A mixture of shell and canister whined from the guns ensconced in the Redoubt behind big, basketwork gabions that were full of protective packed earth: the whole position was carefully sited to cover the point where the British would emerge from the banks of the river.

‘Look there …’ Morgan pointed at a Russian who was desperately trying to set fire to a tar and straw-tipped pole in front of them, ‘… that rogue's trying to light a range-marker.’ Even Morgan's crude grasp of tactics told him that attacking into the face of an enemy that had prepared themselves well enough to have range-markers for the guns was unwise – hadn't someone said something about always seeking a flank?

‘Quick, Nixon, knock him down.’ The Russian struggled with flint and steel as one of the soldiers beside Morgan raised his rifle, squinted and squeezed the trigger as calmly as if on the butts back in England.

‘Damn me, the fucking charge is wet,’ Nixon cursed as the Russian scuttled off into a fold in the ground, whilst the marker spat smokily behind him.

The jumbled line of regiments sputtered up towards the Great Redoubt. Sometimes pausing to fire then reload, the men pushed on despite wide furrows being opened in their lines whenever the Russian guns belched, for at their most effective range the canister rounds were deadly even when fired almost blind through the clinging, grey powder-smoke. Above the tangled, yelling lines Morgan could see the blue Colours of the 23rd and the 7th, the deep green standards of the 19th and his own jaunty, canary-yellow beside the big Union flag, but in an instant they were down, swept away by another sheet of canister.

‘Sir, Major Hume's shouting for you.’ McGucken had seen the senior major hauling at the fallen flags, pulling the Queen's Colour from beneath its stricken ensign, passing it to one of the Colour-Sergeants before taking up the Regimental Colour and bawling for the closest officer.

‘Mother of God, he can't want me.’

‘Just get over there, sir.’

Morgan ducked past the levelled rifles of some of his own men, fumbling with his wet sash to find the scabbard for his sword. As he approached the muddied Hume, a ball hummed through the major's haversack, spilling biscuits and a razor – it was coolly ignored.

‘Ah, Morgan, why the deaf ear? Grab hold of this, get onto the high ground with the colour-sar'nt and for God's sake show front whilst I try to rally them.’

On a hillock, Colour-Sergeant Baghurst had dug the butt of his Colour pike into the ground whilst brandishing his rifle at the enemy entrenchment and shouting encouragements. Then Morgan saw the shot-holes and rents in the bright silk, realizing that he was about to become a magnet for every rifleman and gunner on the field. But with no belt to carry the Colour, he raised the pole that bore the six-foot silk square with both hands, immediately struggling to control it in the breeze.

As if to confirm his fears, no sooner had he drawn close to Baghurst than the Colour-Sergeant yelped, let his flag sag to the ground and grabbed his ankle, barging into one of the men who was hurrying forward. He wasn't alone for long, though, for his servant and fellow Corkman, Keenan, left the ranks and ran to be beside his master – quickly slinging his rifle and picking up the fallen Colour.

‘So, your honour, bet you never expected to see me doing an officer's job, did you?’ Morgan agreed: there were a number of things that surprised him about Keenan, not least his wife, Mary.

Death loved these sparse, scarlet files. No more than two thousand British had climbed out of the riverbed and now the guns were whittling at them so hard that it would be madness to pause to dress the line. Like a tangled piece of string, the troops plodded up the slope, the perfect target for Russian riflemen who were now forming to one side of the Redoubt.

The stolid slabs of Russian infantry were just visible through the smoke, their bayonets glittering above them, whilst hovering about their flanks was a cloud of riflemen. Active men wearing soft green caps, they sped into cover, kneeling behind the scrub, firing, disappearing to reload and then emerging from a different spot. One was handling his ramrod with fluid movements – he paused to adjust his sights then cuddled his butt into his cheek.

Keenan's tongue flicked quickly over his stubbled lips as the pair saw the rifle barrel deliberately swing up towards them. At two hundred paces, every detail of the Russian's uniform and features were clear and both men unconsciously drew their shoulders up to shield themselves as the marksman disappeared behind a cloud of smoke. The bullet snatched at Morgan's wing, holing the bullion and opening a gash in the scarlet cloth at his shoulder through which a pennon of white lining now peeped. Next to him Keenan, without a sound, sank to the ground, the great yellow flag shrouding him for an instant before it was snatched up. Morgan fancied that he saw a smile on the Russian's face.

‘He'll cook you with his next round, sir.’ Sergeant Ormond – one of those steady, likeable men, the backbone of the company – had appeared beside him, giving words to his own thoughts as the ramrod flew down the barrel of the distant rifle.

‘Thank you Ormond – you're a great comfort, you are. Luff, pass me your rifle … is it made ready?’

‘Sir, an' it's dry an' all. Sure you know how it works?’ It wasn't much of a joke, but Luff's words made them all smile amongst the danger and noise. Morgan, like most officers, had been brought up with gun, hounds and rod and took a pride in being more skilful with the new Minié rifle than the soldiers. Despite this, officers didn't carry such weapons in action; gentlemen were expected to arm themselves only with a chivalrous sword and pistol.

Now Morgan glanced at the sights and drew the chunky rifle into the shoulder. The Russian was just starting to kneel – he aimed at his belly and as the pale disc of his face swam above the foresight, he squeezed the trigger. He was always surprised at the kick of the new weapon; a few rounds would leave your shoulder black and blue.

Even above the din, Morgan recognized the sound. He'd first heard it as a boy when shooting seals off Bantry with his father's heavy rifle – the solid, meaty thump of a soft lead ball tearing flesh. The Russian jerked forward onto his face, invisible now amongst the low scrub and the young officer marked the spot as he would for his dog and a downed pheasant.

Had Morgan been able to hear above the pounding of his heart, he would have sensed that the din was less. As they'd raced up the lethal slope splinters and balls had sliced the men around them and Morgan had been conscious of holes and rents suddenly appearing in his Colour as the artillery banged and roared its hatred at them. But at the crucial point, when cool, disciplined gunnery would have won the day, panic seemed to have struck the Russians and now the brass-barrelled howitzers were being manhandled and tugged away by teams of horses to save them from being over-run.

‘Right, come on you lot, they're all in a pother, get amongst 'em,’ Hume recognized the moment. The Russians were confused by the whining shells and bullets and the screaming British: dash and boldness now would carry the position.

Gasping, Morgan crouched with Sergeant Ormond below the bank of gabions, Colours across their laps, gathering themselves for the final rush into the heart of the enemy, whilst the troops around them scrabbled through the unaccountably empty embrasures, boots rasping on the basketwork as, rifles at the ready, they leapt into the gun positions beyond. Catching Morgan by the arm, Ormond led the way up and over the breastwork, brandishing his Colour as soon as he was steady and helping the officer over the obstacle.

Inside the Redoubt everything was in uproar. Four horses plunged and shivered, anchored at one end of their harness by a heavy howitzer and at the other by a subaltern of the 23rd who, clinging to the tack with one hand, had a pistol firmly in the ear of the Russian driver. The man was clearly terrified by the demented youngster and his revolver and he was leaning so far out of his saddle that he was in danger of falling and losing control of his horses, yet still the boy yelled and threatened.

Another gun remained. Morgan saw how Alfred Heyland, commander of Number Six Company, and a handful of his soldiers went surging towards it. There was blood all over Heyland – it dripped from his nose and whiskers and one arm hung uselessly by his side. Later, Morgan was told that Heyland had been blown over bodily by a discharge of grape just yards from the centre of the gun-line in the Great Redoubt – everyone thinking that he was dead, yet he'd risen up like a torn and bleeding Lazarus, determined to lead his men on. Now all that Morgan saw was a crazed thing, chopping at one of the gunners with his sword whilst the men dealt with the others in a mad lust for blood.

Three Russians had been surrounded beside the gun's trail. They all had short swords, but none had drawn them before their attackers pounced. None of the British had reloaded their rifles, nor were their bayonets fixed, so the Russians met death in the most brutal way as butts rose and fell whilst boots kicked and stamped, despite the cries for mercy. Eventually their victims were silent: chests heaving, the executioners looked down at the red splashes on their feet.

But the trophy was theirs. Some men cut away the hastily placed tow-ropes whilst Heyland clutched his sword by the end of its blade and scratched a crude “95” into the green paint of the carriage to confirm its capture. Faint with lack of blood, Heyland was swabbed with bandages and then led away by two of his men. Morgan remembered how well Heyland had danced at Dublin Castle last year – and how jealous they had all been of the flock of women around his elegant form. Now, how could any girl find this broken, bruised creature attractive again?

‘Good men, get those Colours up on the parapet.’ Major Hume was now commanding the Regiment. Just as collected – though even more tattered than when the pair had seen him last – he was bareheaded, quite unarmed and utterly in control. The same self-confidence that Morgan had noticed when they were in the river was asserting itself over every man to whom he spoke, regardless of regiment or company, calming, reassuring and helping frightened boys to become men.

‘We've done it, sir, we've taken the Redoubt.’ Morgan had thrust the butt of the Colour pike hard into the parapet; now he looked round up at the bushy slopes to the horizon no more than three hundred paces above him.

‘Aye, Morgan we have, but there's plenty more Muscovites: look there.’ Hume pointed up the hill.

Although a few hundred British had bloodily taken the centre of the position, they were now pinioned between the unprotected rear of the Great Redoubt and a mass of fresh, Russian infantry who lay on the smoke-laden slope above them. Meanwhile, the British commander, Lord Raglan, had moved forward with a tiny group of his Staff until he was well to the fore, almost in advance of his leading troops with the foresight to order-up a battery of British guns that could fire right into his enemy's flank.

‘Now we'll need some help to hold it.’ Major Hume was so hoarse he could barely make himself heard, despite the fact that the guns and rifles had fallen quiet for an instant right across the battlefield.

‘Yes, sir, Cambridge's Guards are in reserve right behind us, aren't they?’ Morgan knew what was supposed to be the plan, but Hume looked anxiously back towards the river.

‘Well, if they are in reserve, they're a bloody long way away; we need them up here now before the Russians counterattack,’ Hume replied.

The Duke of Cambridge's division had, indeed, been held in reserve, untouched by the fire that had so damaged the Light and Second Divisions during the advance to the river and now he was determined not to let his command fall into the same ruptured state as they crossed the Alma. But Cambridge's caution meant that his Division lay too far to the rear of the troops that were now so horribly exposed in the Great Redoubt. They should have been closely supporting the first wave of attackers, on hand to deal with whatever the Russians planned to do next.

The unnatural quiet ended as suddenly as it began. As the last few men seeped into the Redoubt and caught their breath, the danger of the position became more and more obvious. The sergeants busied themselves redistributing ammunition and clearing fouled breeches with their combination tools whilst trying to calm and steady the men. Despite their every effort, though, the troops started endless, ragged cheering that Morgan was raw enough to mistake for a sign of confidence rather than one of near panic. He and Sergeant Ormond had been relieved of the responsibility of the Colours by two uninjured sergeants, so they bawled with the best of them until a spatter of bullets sent them to ground.

‘Where's that fire coming from, Sar'nt Ormond?’ Morgan felt useless as he crouched on the ground with no Colour, no troops to command and only a sword and pistol.

‘Must be them lot, sir, there.’ Ormond paused for a moment whilst reloading his rifle and pointed through the smoke to a slab of Russian infantry about three hundred yards up the hillside beyond them. One half were firing whilst the other half plodded obliquely across the rear of the Great Redoubt, bayonets twinkling, the sun flashing off the brass spikes of their leather helmets.

That morning, Morgan had taken the Tranter revolver from its case and carefully loaded the six chambers before clipping it to his narrow sash – he thought he could remember holding it above the current but, as he drew it, he had no confidence that the thing would work.

‘You'd be better off with one of the casualties' rifles, sir, wouldn't you?’ Ormond asked.

Morgan looked around him – none of the other officers had picked-up rifles, they were sticking to the unwritten rule that gentlemen left the sordid business of killing to the rank and file – a rule that he'd already broken. So now he contented himself with his pistol, balancing it carefully on his forearm as he aimed at the coatskirts of a crossing Russian and pulled the trigger. He was rewarded with a bang, a jolt and a face full of smoke followed, much to his surprise, by five more faultless detonations, yet the Muscovites tramped on untouched, apparently oblivious to his fire. How his father would have scoffed.

Heads and hearts more hardened to war may have been able to resist the spark of panic that now fanned through the mass. Two Staff officers scrambled through the position, waving their arms, yelling, ‘Don't fire, they're the French’ then ‘Fusiliers retire’ in chaotic succession.

‘Retire be damned, stand fast and fire low.’ Hume had almost lost his voice, but other officers echoed him. ‘Morgan, put that wretched thing down; get amongst the boys, won't you?’ Stung by the words, Morgan thrust his half-reloaded pistol away.

‘Here, sir, help me with these.’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken thrust a clutch of paper cartridges into the young man's hand, gesturing him to calm the troops from the hotch-potch of regiments around him. Within the Great Redoubt were men of the 7th and 23rd Fusiliers, both as keen as anyone else to hear and obey an order that would get them out of the horror with their honour intact and once a bugler took up the “Retire” all was lost. Some men paused, firing sullenly into their enemies, but most bundled back through the embrasures that they had seized just a short time before with barely a backward glance. The troops streamed down the hill, trying hard to avoid their dead and wounded comrades who studded the slopes.

Morgan never really knew whether the Scots Fusilier Guards had broken or not. He could certainly remember their Colours standing fast amongst the smoke and shot and, later, the body of a young Guards officer in the hospital riven with bayonet wounds. He could recall Russians too close for comfort, his imperfectly loaded pistol and then the whole Guards Brigade in close and perfect order as the survivors of the first attack on the Redoubt eddied around them, but none of this left the same impression as Hume did. Somehow he'd retrieved the 95th's Colour party and reformed it; somehow he'd clubbed a score or so of his own men around him; and somehow he found the sheer gall to persuade them to face the Russian fire once again.

Morgan wondered if Hume's exaggerated courtesy was natural or whether he was simply trying to master the surrounding bedlam. It hardly mattered, for there wasn't a man in sight who could have failed to notice a senior, shot-holed and tousled major approach an ensign of the 3rd Grenadiers, brace to attention and ask the youngster's permission to fall Her Majesty's 95th Regiment in on their flank. Mere theatre, perhaps – but it worked. The boy in the bearskin stuttered his approval and now no one in the 95th could fail to get into step behind Hume and beside the sweeping line of Guardsmen.

Without the heavy guns in the Redoubt, the fire was certainly lighter this time, but the fear was worse. Just a few minutes before, Morgan had found himself all but oblivious to the hum and crack of shot knowing that all eyes were upon him and the Colour that he carried. Now, though, he was amongst the bloodied, those who chose to face the horrors of those slopes again and who no longer needed a mere subaltern's bravado. Regimental pride was a powerful thing. With the Guards file-firing as they advanced, the knot of 95th steadied and began to ply their weapons with the precision that they'd been taught.

‘Come on show-soldiers, it's this way to Mr Russ.’ The boy, Pegg, seemed to have recovered sufficiently from his earlier fright not only to be beating a creditable tattoo on his dented drum, but also to be taunting the line of bearskins to his left.

‘So when we take the position for you will you be able to hold it this time, short-arse?’ One of the Guardsmen snarled back at Pegg.

The rifles sickled the Russians. The enemy musket-fire was feeble in return and as each volley smashed home so low mounds of moaning or motionless bodies began to pile up. Morgan saw a Russian officer come running to the front of his troops, sword point down, waving his men on. A line of bayonets were lowered and a brown-grey wall of men began to trot down the hill towards them.

‘You five, kneel,’ croaked McGucken. ‘Three hundred – but aim at their knees, it's not that far. Get that bastard officer.’ One fouled rifle failed to fire, but four rounds and a pointless one from Morgan's pistol flew straight and true and when the smoke from the muzzles had cleared, the officer had disappeared and the bank of Russians had stalled, their muskets touching the ground as they goggled at the approaching British.

Some unheard message pulled the 95th to a halt. The Guards to their left had stopped, all looking expectantly to the centre of their line, whilst the other two battalions continued on their steady tramp. Then flashing metal, a sibilant rasp and six hundred long, needle-like bayonets were fixed over the muzzles of the men's rifles. Another pause, and then with a mute command, the Guards stepped out.

The Russians stood in the same dense columns that had served them well at Borodino, little expecting that at such close ranges a Minié bullet would pierce not just the front rank but find the second and sometimes the third. As the lead squashed and distorted on the first impact, so it became all the more damaging on subsequent strikes – no troops could stand against this.

As the Guards' pace increased, so the Russian columns dissolved. Harried now by French and British horse artillery, the great, grey masses started to peel away, leaving just their dead and wounded to face the bayonets.

‘Here you are, Mr Morgan, sir, I'm sending one to Mam.’

He wondered just how grateful Mrs Pegg would be for the brass eagle with its big ‘31’ from the front of a Russian helmet and whether she would approve as her boy lifted an icon from around the rapidly cooling neck of one of their foes.

The earth and sandbag walls of the Great Redoubt gave welcome protection as the British surged back into it for the second time. The Allies' guns had played on the Russians as they massed for the counter-attack there and now the red coats of the earlier casualties were all but submerged by their dead and dying enemies. There on his back, arms outstretched, head lolling back and mouth wide open was Private Peter Luff – he was as pale as milk, the river water still dripped gently from his clothes, mingling with the great brown stain that spread below his body whilst two flies crawled over his lips.

‘God help us, Pegg, it's Peter Luff, ain't it? Did you see him fall?’

‘No, sir, only just seen the poor bastard. Save him from a flogging though, won't it?’ Now, Private Luff would never receive the punishment that he'd been awarded a few days before. With scarcely a glance at his dead friend, Pegg ransacked another corpse.

Then, just feet from them a shot cracked out. Without a sound, a subaltern of the 95th toppled over, banging his face hard into the earth. His dead fingers still held the water-bottle with which he had been trying to slake the thirst of one wounded Russian, when another had shot him in the neck. Now both blood and water spilled into the ground, but before Morgan or Pegg could properly grasp what was going on, two of their soldiers were upon the Russian, thrusting at him with their bayonets. The Muscovite cried once, twice and then was silent as the men wiped his gore from their blades.

The Guards battalions were quickly brought in hand, stoically pushing past and beyond the earthwork in an attempt to turn their enemy's defeat into a rout, but Hume ordered his clutch of 95th to check and rally the rest of the troops.

The guns still thundered but at distant targets now. For the first time in what seemed weeks, Morgan was conscious that the air was not full of metal and that death, for him at least, was slightly more distant. The men sank all around him, deaf to the cries of the wounded, as they pulled out their stumpy clay pipes, some of the younger ones falling instantly asleep, lips still black with powder. Even the sergeants, moving amongst the survivors trying to find out who was and who was not answering the roll, staggered, exhausted.

Morgan sat down heavily. He rootled around his haversack until he found the silver-topped brandy flask that he had bought in Dublin on the way out and, hands shaking with the sheer relief of being alive, he unscrewed it and took a long pull at the raw spirit. Looking between his soaked and muddy legs and boots, he saw the grassy hillside below him covered with scarlet and grey cairns. It seemed like an eternity since that farewell dinner at home when he'd been asked if he could take another's life, if he could widow wives and orphan children. Well, now he had and it gave him no pleasure. The smiles of those at the table were still vivid, but now James Keenan was torn by shot, Mary was stained with her own husband's blood and had seen things that no teenage girl should have to see whilst his own courage had been tested to the full. As he sat and pondered, Colour-Sergeant McGucken lowered himself wearily to the ground beside him.

‘Well, Colour-Sar'nt, that will be the first battle-honour on our Colours.’ Morgan forced his gloom and tiredness away.

McGucken pulled out his pipe and poked and prodded at the bowl before answering, ‘Aye, sir, an' let's pray it's our last.’

TWO Glassdrumman

The young moon winked through the shutters. Glassdrumman, the warm, shabby, peeling Georgian hall that was the Morgan family's Cork home was deep in sleep. Mary Cade pulled her nightshift down to cover her bottom, wrapped an errant blanket about them both and moved herself a fraction on top of Tony Morgan, their passion spent. The chambermaid and the young officer had had their fill of one another and now was the time for talk.

‘Maude Hawtrey's lovely – she sits a horse so well, almost like a man. And it's obvious to anyone that you're getting on famously, so much in common, scriptures and the like.’ Mary held Morgan's face in both her hands, his dark-fair hair and whiskers tousled, her nose an inch from his, murmuring, smiling so that he'd have to search for the barbs.

‘Mary, please, why are you always like this afterwards?’

‘Mary, please.’ Even in a whisper she mimicked him well enough, catching the Englishness that he'd cultivated over the past couple of years. ‘And why are you always like this afterwards? You're all promises and passion with me here, but downstairs I'm nothing to you, am I – d'you think I'm some sort of eejit?’ In an instant the warmth and smile had disappeared. Her face was now serious, the honey had gone from her voice and she neglected that little gesture of sweeping a jet-black lock of hair from out of her eyes.

Without warning her sticky weight was off him. She slid from under the blanket and onto the woollen rug beside the bed, hands on her hips, a curling mane of hair down her back, chin and breasts petulantly thrust forward. Morgan recognized the signs and unconsciously pulled the covers up against the storm.

‘What happiness d'you think you'll get there, Lieutenant Mister-bloody-Morgan? Your Da will end up with some Prod stronghold and you'll be at his and the Hawtreys' beck and call for the rest of your days, like a wee puppy.’ Mary hissed her venom. He lunged and tried to grab her wrists. Occasionally she could be tamed, won round by kisses and enveloping arms but this time she wouldn't be turned. She left the dawn-lit room as swiftly as her pleasure had cooled.

Morgan winced as the bedroom door banged – did she want everyone to know? And she was wrong of course. Maude would never glance at Tony Morgan whilst he was soldiering; besides, a war could change his world. But whatever lay ahead with stringy Maude, the smell, warmth and sheer sparkle of Mary would stay with him. He groped to find his watch.

‘So, the young lion's awake and prepared to grace us with his presence at last.’ Billy Morgan, a widower at fifty-nine, grey curls hanging too long about the collar of his badly-starched shirt, his waistcoat unbuttoned and loose, greeted his son as he came into breakfast.

The big dining room was barely warm from the peat fire that the servants had started before any of the family were awake, lighting up the walls and heavily decorated ceiling where the grey March morning light hardly penetrated. Silver entrée dishes jostled for space on the sideboard, little spirit lamps flickering below them to keep the porridge, eggs, bacon and kidneys warm for the Morgans and their guest.

‘I am, father: good morning, Colonel, I hope you slept well?’

Tony had learnt not to encourage his father's heavy jokes, particularly when others were there; to do anything else would only spur him on. Now Billy's oldest friend, Colonel Dick Kemp, grinned across the table at him.

‘I slept as well as your father's lumpy mattress would allow: I've had better nights in a snake-filled storm ditch with jackals licking my balls; I only stay at Glassdrumman out of pity for the old boy.’ When Tony had come back for home leave a week ago, he'd found Kemp deeply ensconced there, staying for a full three months of his furlough from India where he commanded a battalion of Bengal infantry. The two officers, despite the gap in age and rank, had soon formed an easy bond in the face of Billy Morgan's wit that sent the banter crackling between the three of them.

‘Less of the “old boy”, Kemp. Just because I was a-soldiering before you'd thrown a leg across a drab, don't come the “Victor of Aliwal” with me!’ As a very young man, Billy Morgan had seen some gentle service in the West Cork Militia, patrolling the Atlantic coastline against the last vestiges of Napoleon's hordes whilst Kemp had just been starting on his career as an ensign of the Honourable East India Company. And that career had been a placid one until Kemp, if his accounts were to be believed, had beaten the Sikhs almost single-handed, smashing them as effectively as they had snapped one of his legs at the Battle of Aliwal eight years before.

Tony knew the signs by now. Kemp's sharp, black eyes were shining, he was full of piss and vinegar, keen for fun at any price, but if the two, older men started one of their verbal skirmishes now, there would be no end to it: distraction was the answer.

‘What have the papers to say today, Father?’ Tony asked as he sprinkled cinnamon and sugar over his porridge.

‘Well, those fools in London and Paris have finally declared war.’ Billy shook the paper out, the headlines bellowing the formal recognition of a war that had been underway for several months already.

‘Tell me something that surprises me, Father. Here, Keenan, look at this: at last we're at war.’ Private James Keenan, Tony's batman in the 95th whom he'd selected for the post as much for the fact that he was a fellow Corkman as for his competence, had brought more coffee for his master. When the Regiment was sent on leave before embarking for foreign service, Keenan had chosen to spend the time comfortably fed and watered by his master in Glass-drumman rather than with his own family scraping an existence from the soil just a dozen miles away in Clonakilty. Now he narrowed his eyes and laboured over the letters of the headline.

‘So, we're to have a fight, then, your honour. But where will it be?’ Keenan asked the question to which none of them knew the answer.

Six months before, the Russian Admiral Nachimov had sunk an ageing Turkish fleet at Sinope in the Black Sea; since then war had been an inevitability. The Turks had already been hard at it with the Russians, each pounding the other inconclusively: now the formal entry of the Allies meant that war could start in earnest, plunging Europe into her first serious conflict since Waterloo.

‘Good question, Keenan.’ They all deferred to Kemp for he knew the Russians well – or so he claimed. ‘We saw more than enough of the Russians' tricks up on the Frontier after that nonsense at Kabul in forty-two. They're crafty buggers an' John Turk will need all the help he can get if he's to throw them out of Moldavia and Wallachia. You'll be scampering up and down the Danube, I'd guess.’

The mention of two such exotic names stalled the discussion for a moment, adding to Kemp's stature, before Tony cut in, ‘You're probably right, Colonel, but everybody seemed to have a different view back in Weedon.’

The 95th were stationed at the newly-built barracks in Weedon in Northamptonshire. Just six weeks before the commanding officer had ordered a general parade and told them all that they were to start, ‘warlike preparations’.

‘All we've been told is that we're to be ready to go to, “The East” and there's been some craic over that, I can tell you. Kingsley, the adjutant – you remember him, Father, he transferred in from the Cape Mounted Rifles – says we'll go wherever the Turks want us, but Hume, the senior major, reckons that the French will want us to have a go at the Muscovites' fleet in Sevastopol up to the north, in the Crimea.’

‘The French,’ Billy Morgan said it as if he were clearing phlegm, ‘how in the name of God have we got involved with those rogues?’

‘Father, before you start, those poor fellows have had their necks stretched enough: I'd say that Colonel Kemp and Keenan can probably name every last one.’ Tony was trying to stop his father from treating the whole room to another account of the highpoint of Billy's Militia service when, at seventeen, he'd arrested and strung-up a boatload of shipwrecked French sailors. Local society was still undecided whether they were spies or not, but Billy was convinced and still delighted in the story.

‘Aye, well it's all right for you an' your clever pals loafing around in barracks without a hand-span of proper soldiering to your name,’ Billy Morgan was warming to one of his favourite themes, ‘but if you'd seen what those damn Frogs and the Croppies did to this country when I was a boy, then that so-called revolution of theirs in forty-eight – and now they've got another of those Buonaparte fuckers back at the helm, you'd be getting ready to fight the Frenchies and not the Russians who helped us to thrash 'em last time.’ His voice fell before adding, ‘They're just a parcel of bloody Papists.’

There was a flicker of embarrassment as Kemp and Tony looked at Keenan – the only Catholic there – but the soldier-servant was too used to this sort of talk from his betters to take any notice or offence.

‘What d'you, think, James Keenan?’ Billy Morgan sensed the others' slight discomfort and tried to cover it by bringing the man back into the conversation, ‘Wouldn't you prefer to go at the French and leave the Russians to their own devices?’

‘I couldn't care less, your honour …’ Keenan poured more coffee for Kemp, ‘I'm just a soldier an' I'll go wherever I'm told an' put a lead bullet into any head that Mr Morgan asks me to, Catholic, Protestant, Musselman or Jew, they're all one to me. Besides, they say Turkish tail's worth a look.’

There was a shout of appreciative laughter at Keenan's simple philosophy and it brought an end to talk of war.

‘Now, I'm off to have a peep at this horse you've got for me, Billy,’ said Kemp, rising from the table, wiping heartily at his lips before letting his napkin fall to the ground. ‘I'll see you in the tack room in, what … five and twenty minutes, shall we say, Mr Morgan?’ Keenan pulled the Colonel's chair away for him and retrieved his discarded cloth.

‘That's fine, Colonel, I'll be with you as soon as I've finished my breakfast,’ Tony half rose from his chair respectfully as his senior left the room.

‘You'll be taking Kemp for a canter over Clow's Top, will you, son?’ Billy pushed more bacon home as a slight smile lit his face.

‘I will and don't fret, I know that Miss Hawtrey and her cousin are expecting to see us up there. I'll show them that fox's earth that Finn's been talking about all winter.’

‘Aye, well mind you do, you'll get bugger-all time between now and the end of your leave to speak to young Maude with anything like privacy, an' I've told Kemp to give you both a bit of breathing space, so make the most of it.’ With no mother to corral suitable young women for Morgan during his rare leaves, Billy had to do the job instead, the most promising target being the eldest daughter of Judge Hawtrey from Leap. He'd first introduced them last year; what Maude lacked in beauty and warmth was more than compensated for by her family's wealth and position.

A sudden crash at the sideboard made both father and son jump.

‘Mary, have a care, won't you? Those are the last few bits of Mrs Morgan's favourite china.’ Neither man had noticed the girl glide in from the scullery to start clearing the plates and dishes. She must have heard all of the last conversation and now she banged away with none of her normal care, her usually elegant lips pursed in a tight, cold line. She said not a thing, almost snatching the cups and saucers from their hands, her face set and expressionless until James Keenan held the door open for her. Then she smiled: she smiled a great, lovely beam straight into the young soldier's eyes before both servants left the room.

‘Don't know what's got into her this morning – though I've a fair idea what got into her last night…’ Billy looked hard at his son. ‘Any ideas, boy?’

‘No, father, but she can be awfully cussed sometimes, you know.’

‘Yes, I do, son … but please be careful.’

Tony paused at the back door of the house to buckle his spurs to his polished, brown, riding boots and take his crop from the mahogany stand. As he clicked over the setts towards the tack room, he could hear Colonel Kemp's excited voice.

‘They came on like bloody French did the Sikhs – mind you, half their officers was école trained – and it looked bad until the guns put some canister amongst them. I never expected natives to stand against our sepoys, but I was wrong. Sir Harry used the infantry well, but it took you and the Sixteenth Lancers, Finn, to really finish the day.’

Morgan entered the big, leather-smelling room just as Finn, at forty-two still as slender as the lance he'd once carried, took to the floor. Legs bowed, imaginary reins and weapons in hand, the former sergeant bobbed below the razor-like cuts, jibbed his mount to the left and dug hard at his invisible foe,

‘I tell you, sir, a big turbaned fellah came up to our officer for to bayonet him, bold as you please. But like the griffin I was, I pushed my lance too hard – the fucking pennon came out the other side and I was left capering like a damn fool round the poor man, so. I shoulda dropped the thing and used my sword – that's when I got this.’

Morgan had seen the three-inch weal across Finn's shoulder often enough, but as he peeled back his collar, Kemp hissed between his teeth in admiration.

‘Ah, Morgan, Finn and I were just recounting the delights of Aliwal. I bet you haven't seen as smooth a job as this, though?’ Kemp rolled up his trouser leg to show a purple, mottled, scaly shin-bone deeply etched across.

‘I'd ordered our boys to form square to keep the Sikh horse at bay when their guns caught us on the nose. I went down like a sack of shite – poor Goldie was dead before she hit the ground and me stuck below her. Tricky moment, that, but the doctors did wonders. If we'd had the boy surgeons that some of the Queen's regiments did, I don't doubt I'd have lost it. Beautiful job, ain't it?’

Colonel and sergeant preened and bragged. The bond of shared experience quite overcame any difference in military or social rank, both men grinning with an almost childish pleasure over their mutual brushes with death. Morgan pondered their casual acceptance of the pain and destruction that they had both suffered and inflicted, remembering the fearful casualties that the Sikhs and British had imposed on each other. In the depot at Fermoy he'd seen young men, some without limbs, one blinded, another with a face that looked as if it had been scythed; then he'd watched the guns at Chobham firing canister and shell at paper targets: Colonel Kemp had been just such to the Sikh gunners only a few years ago. Now he wondered whether Keenan and he would have to face such horror and how he would react. Kemp and Finn were just about to put the Sikhs to the sword again when James Keenan bustled into the room.

‘Sable's ready for you outside, your honour an' we've got Thunder for you, Colonel Kemp, sir, like you said, Mr Finn,’ Keenan had fitted very easily into life at Glassdrumman, accepting Finn's experience and authority and hanging on his every word when war or horseflesh was being discussed.

‘Aye, lad, we'll be with you directly …’ Kemp waved him away, he hadn't yet finished his war story.

‘No, sir, the Master's keen that you're not late for your meeting with the ladies …’ Keenan spoke with surprising firmness: Billy Morgan had told him to hasten Kemp and Tony and hasten them he would, officers or not.

Kemp paused for a moment, not used to being gainsaid by either soldiers or servants, before remembering in whose house he was a guest.

‘Quite so, James Keenan, we're at the ladies' command. Come on young Morgan, stop delaying us with all that gammon, you've a gusset to sniff.’ Kemp's crude familiarity was greeted with a peal of laughter from all the men, taking the edge off the atmosphere. In his middle fifties, Indian living had given Kemp a generous figure: now it filled the doorframe as he stumped outside with Morgan.

An under-groom held Thunder's stirrup for Kemp whilst Keenan steadied Sable, the big gelding, for Tony. He levered himself aboard as he thought about the colonel's words: it was an odd thing, but in all the time he'd known Maude Hawtrey he'd never even thought about her gusset. Her inheritance, certainly; her place in society, for sure; but he could never remember lusting after her. There was none of the constant ache that he felt for Mary Cade who, even now, was crossing the stableyard with a great bunch of freshly-cut daffodils in her hands. Tony smiled across at her, but she looked straight through him.

‘There, your honour, don't let Sable run away with you …’ Keenan tightened Tony's girth and smoothed the saddle-leather back into position as he noticed his master's look, ‘An' she's a great wee girl, ain't she? Have a grand day,’ and he turned away to follow Mary inside.

‘God, I love these mornings, don't you, Morgan?’ Kemp turned to Tony and yelled above the noise of their horses' cantering hooves as they vied with each other over the rich, Irish turf, ‘I never thought I'd want to see a drop o' rain again when I left Ireland, but you get so goddamn bored with the dust and the sun and the constant smell of shit in India that you're almost glad to be pissed-wet through and perished just for a change.’ They cantered over the field towards the rendezvous with Maude and her young cousin that Billy Morgan had arranged.

‘Aye, Colonel, but it must be good living and an easy command with sepoys, ain't it?’ Morgan asked more out of politeness than curiosity, for he'd never wanted to serve with one of John Company's regiments, despite the better style of living and the supposed adventure of life in India. No, he'd been quite clear with his father when the question of what he wanted to do for a job came up a few years before, it was one of the Queen's regiments or nothing at all. Why, he'd prefer to be a damned vicar than be marooned in Hindoostan.

‘It's suited me well enough, but I miss the old country and have never been able to afford to be in a smart regiment like yours.’ Kemp had reined back a little, keener to talk to his friend's son than to run him ragged.

‘There's nothing smart about the Ninety-Fifth, Colonel, we're not like the Guards or cavalry, just ordinary Line, and “young” Line at that, not a battle to our name so far.’ The 95th had only been raised in 1823, every soldier and officer being acutely aware of the absence of honours on the regiment's Colours.

‘But there a good lot, ain't they? You fit well enough, don't you, or are you full of those bloody merchants' sons who take a rise out of us Paddies?’ The more lurid papers had been obsessed over the past few years with snobbery amongst the officer class; the friction that it had caused and the bullying in regiments that had become infamous for the ‘hazing’ of officers who didn't quite fit. Kemp had obviously been following all of this from India.

‘No, not really, Colonel. There's one or two cads about, but nothing like the happenings in the Forty-Sixth …’ Despite the news of war, the papers were still full of the scandal of a young officer from a ‘new money’ background whose peers had treated him so badly that he'd become demented, challenging even his commanding officer to an illegal duel. ‘We rub along well enough. The Bible-punchers are more of a bore.’

‘Aye, we get more than our fair share of those twots out east…’ Kemp had eased Thunder right back now, keen to hear what Morgan had to say, ‘… always trying to impose their damned religion on the sepoys, never understanding how much offence they can cause to both Muslim and Hindu.’

‘Yes, you've got to be so damned careful with the men, though. You expect some of the officers to be full of that righteous stuff and know to steer clear, but then some of the boys will pull the “good book” out of their haversacks and sit about reading with a face like a smacked arse rather than chasing tail an' drinking like normal men.’ Most of Morgan's men were the products of the overcrowded slums or had come straight from the plough, their vices and attitudes being wholly predictable. But a handful of them were different, usually the better-educated, Scottish boys who tended to band together when off-duty, often gravitating around a particular pious officer or sergeant: no better or worse soldiers for it, just a bit different. ‘And we've even got one or two who are keen on this damn teetotal nonsense,’ Morgan added.

‘Thank Jaysus there's little enough of that in the Punjab just now,’ replied Kemp. ‘Why, you need a good belt of grog just to keep the sun off. Never can understand how the natives manage without it. What are your non-commissioned men like?’

‘For the most part they're really good, Colonel, steady and loyal as you like. They lack a bit of imagination, sometimes – too keen on the manuals and they can be rough on the private soldiers, but we're lucky with our Colour-Sergeant, McGucken who's got fifteen years' service already.’

‘Well, take it from me, young Mr Morgan, you don't need imagination in battle, just plenty of guts and unquestioning obedience. When the iron begins to fly, take my tip and stick close to this Colour-Sergeant of yours, he'll do you well.’ Kemp spoke with all the authority of a man who had been tested on the anvil of war already: Morgan envied him. ‘Now, there's the ladies, enough of this war talk, you've got your other career to think about.’ Kemp smiled and winked at Morgan.

Now Morgan saw just what Mary had meant in bed that morning, for Maude Hawtrey sat stiffly, very mannishly, despite her side-saddle. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun below her low-crowned hat, the veil exaggerating rather than hiding her jutting nose. Laced and stayed, her figure had none of the ripeness of Mary's. With her was her plump fourteen-year-old cousin, Charlotte Foster, whose pony was a little too big for her; now she was fighting to control it.

The two women had heard the men approaching, had measured their distance from the barred wooden gate that led into the next pasture and slowed to a walk to let Kemp or Morgan dismount and open it for them. The colonel, remembering his instructions, broke into a trot and got there first, swinging down from the saddle with more grace than might be expected of a man of his girth.

‘Good morning Colonel, that's civil of you.’ Maude tilted her head to Kemp with a slight smile as he swung the big gate open for the other three.

Morgan edged up alongside Maude – Kemp was giving him every chance. But as the two riders walked to the gate Charlotte's skittish pony decide to have its own way, suddenly breaking into a canter and trying to squeeze between Morgan and the rough-hewn gatepost as the girl hauled uselessly at its bit. With a shriek that echoed back off a nearby spinney, Charlotte scraped her leg along the post, her velvet cap falling from her head as she dropped her crop and reins and clung to the mane. The pony trotted on, raising its nose and snorting at its freedom as the reins hung loose, before the rider tumbled slowly from the saddle and landed with a damp thump on the grass.

‘Gracious me, that wee devil's killed Charlotte!’ exclaimed Maude, and she pressed her gloved hand hard against her lips.

Certainly, petticoats and habit lay motionless on the grass, but the child's outraged moaning suggested that the diagnosis was probably wrong. In an instant, though, Morgan was out of the saddle and alongside the girl, her cries subsiding almost as soon as he wrapped his arms about her.

‘There, Miss Foster, there. Are you hurt or just winded, jewel?’ Tony could see that it was more shock than actual harm.

‘It's my leg, sir,’ Charlotte sobbed.

‘Forgive me, please, miss, but can you point your foot…’ Morgan reached as decorously as he could below the backless skirt of her riding habit, gently holding her calf through the corduroy breeches that she wore below, ‘… and wiggle your toes?’

The pony cropped the grass a few yards away, looking pleased with itself.

‘Yes … yes I think so.’ Charlotte's tears had quite subsided under the young officer's touch.

There was the smallest rip in the leg of the girl's breeches where the gatepost had scored the cloth; now Morgan helped Charlotte to her feet and she hopped a few paces, gingerly putting her weight on the suspect leg before stepping a few paces more whilst still clutching firmly to Morgan's arm.

‘Well, Mr Morgan you're quite the man for a lady to have around in an emergency, aren't you?’ Maude had her horse well in hand as she gazed down at Morgan from her saddle.

‘I try to rise to every challenge, Miss Hawtrey,’ he replied, ignoring Kemp's suppressed guffaw in the background.

‘I'm sure that we're both very grateful to you. I think I'd better get Charlotte home now – that fox's earth can wait for another occasion, I hope. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you both at dinner tonight,’ said Maude as she held the pony's bridle as Morgan helped Charlotte to mount.

The two cousins walked their mounts away across the spongy meadow and Morgan didn't have long to wait for Kemp's assessment. ‘Well, young Morgan that was a nice piece of work, but I can think of challenges that would make me rise more quickly than that ice-cube.’

The starched white collar was always tricky. No matter how many times he fiddled with studs and pins, no matter how much help his servant gave him, Morgan still found it difficult to shoe-horn himself into the simple black and white of evening dress without time in hand. Father had wanted him to wear his regimentals for his final dinner party, but he'd resisted, settling for Keenan's waiting at table in his scarlet. Father's friends would be attentive enough without his having to flaunt his gallantry.

In an unusual fit of competence, the servants had lit the drawing-room fire in plenty of time. Despite the damp peat, the blaze was almost too much for a spring night and the guests quickly migrated to the cooler, less smoky end of the room. Kemp was reserved, for he realized that the evening should belong to Tony and that there was little interest in wars past.

Billy Morgan had every intention of thoroughly lionizing his son. The glory that Tony would reflect upon his father could only be increased if attention were lavished upon him on this, his final night at home. The difficulty was that Mrs Amelia Smythe was one of the guests. Tony could quite see the attraction of the young widow whose husband had failed to return from the Cape last year, but he hadn't realized just how interested his father was in the woman. In fact, he could be excused for wondering just who the main guest of honour was.

Desultory enquiries were made of the young hero whilst they drank. His father's friends asked endless questions about weapons and horses, all designed to display their own militia experience, whilst Kemp restricted himself to opinions only upon the Russians and their antics on the Afghan border. The warlike talk cooled, though, as Billy concentrated the full force of his charm upon Amelia. Imperial ambitions soon gave way to domestic ones, sabre-rattling to numbers of acres, fleets of ships to stables full of hunters.

The silver had been polished almost entirely clean. Whilst the candles were a little uneven, at least they were all burning, shedding a gentle light on the only slightly smeared crystal. Perhaps Morgan's expectations had been raised too high by the standards required in the Mess, for his father seemed oblivious to the corner-cutting, purring over the display and making great play of finding Mrs Smythe's seat for her.

Sitting opposite Amelia Smythe, Morgan gazed at Mary who stood ready to serve her. The girl had on a muslin dress passed down from some lady guest and she had carefully rouged her cheeks whilst her hair, Tony was sure, had felt the deft fingers of Mrs O'Connor, the housekeeper. The ribbons and ringlets were strangely similar to those that adorned Maude Hawtrey who was sitting next to him – but there was little doubt upon whom they looked better. Whilst Mary made the impression that she intended, Tony tried to avoid her glances, but he couldn't fail to notice her smiles. From behind him darted the yellow cuff of Keenan's regimental coatee as plates and glasses were whipped away. The young soldier's movements seemed strangely in tune with those of Mary across the table.

Tony did his best with Maude and the bruised Charlotte. The little sallies that he tried with Miss Hawtrey seemed to tell, but her polite enquiries about the typical temperature in the East, whether he would have to keep warm or cool and how trying the indigenous snakes and flies would be were hard to endure. To her the ‘East’ was a definite place, populated by a distinct and loathsome tribe with the absolute intention of making his life as uncomfortable as possible. Try as he might, he could not convince her of the reality of the Russians, the certainty of their trying to kill rather than simply discommode him and the absolute gallantry with which he would confound them. No, to Maude war was no platform of valour, merely a plain of banality. On the other hand, Charlotte's accident at least gave Morgan something plausible to talk about whilst reminding Maude of another sort of gallantry.

The courses seemed endless. Billy stuck to the old custom of feeding early and feeding plenty no doubt hoping to impress their guests. Soup gave way to ices, savouries to meats, jellies to slices of offal on toast and finally puddings, the whole accompanied by the finest that the Morgan cellar could provide. There would have been every temptation to lighten the burden of his neighbours with drink, but with Maude at such close quarters he hardly dared.

Finally, the toasts. The Queen and Albert began the cavalcade, the army and the navy came next, respective regiments followed hard: then the Tsar and Pope (eyes well damned) brought up the rear.

Warming to his role, Billy called for silence again: ‘Friends, it's been some time since a Morgan answered the call to war.’ Father must have a wonderful memory, thought Tony. There had been no whiff of powder for the old captain and the West Cork Militia along Bantry Bay forty-odd years ago. ‘We don't know where this great war will take Tony, but we do know that it's made new enemies of old friends and new friends of old enemies. In my day you knew where you stood.’

A long way from danger, thought Tony. It was impossible not to like the man, but he made such a show of his militia service all those years ago that the guests could have been forgiven for thinking that it was Billy who was about to go and humble the Tsar, not him.

‘But in this pell-mellery all I can do is to show my son our admiration with a gift that we pray he does not have to use – at least, not against Christians.’

The last phrase drew a snort from the men, but had Tony not been concentrating so hard on the unexpected present he would have noticed a frown from Amelia. Finn, smart as paint in his bottle-green suit of livery, moved from the shadows and passed a slender mahogany box to Billy Morgan. Tony, quite forgetting napkin and chair leg half stumbled as his father beckoned him forward to accept the gift. A little brass plate let into the top was inscribed, ‘A. Morgan Esqre, Gren Coy, 95th Regt.’ The box contained a steely-blue, walnut-stocked Tranter with patches, powder and enough lead to quench the ambition of any Muscovite.

‘That's a fine-looking thing. May I?’ Now alongside the Morgans, Kemp's fingers took the pistol with an almost lascivious grace, coiling themselves around the chequered stock whilst gently tickling the trigger. Supporting it on his beefy left forearm he aimed at the curtain. ‘Only some of us had revolvers in the Punjab and they were nowhere near as fine as this. Remember, Mr Morgan, you'll have the advantage with a repeater, but don't go wasting shot at long range. Wait til' your man gets up close then stick the thing hard into his face before you fire. At Aliwal I had a pepperpot that Charteris – you remember him, Billy? – had urged me to try. All the barrels failed and I ended up using the wretched thing like a club. Oh, I do beg your pardon.’ Kemp cut himself short, realizing that he was marring Billy's moment.

The generosity and unexpectedness of the gift quite silenced Tony. He'd rehearsed a little speech that he expected to give once the toasts had finished – it was brief, self-effacing yet poignant with suggested danger and valour, honed to beguile both lady and maid – but in the event it was still-born. He tumbled out some almost adequate words before resorting to a toast to his father's and friends' health.

Extra peat had redoubled the effects of the drawing-room fire. A lacklustre enquiry or two from the vicar and his wife soon ran into the sand and Tony was desperately seeking another topic when Amelia Smythe appeared at his side. She was a shapely, almost pretty woman who suited the black dress and sparse jewellery that she wore. She was carefully groomed, her hair piled high, powder subtly applied, simple clusters of diamonds at her ears and throat, yet there was a sadness in her grey eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Morgan saw immediately that she was not bent upon platitudes, for she thrust her chin forward, strong opinion bubbling to be set free.

‘Mr Morgan, forgive my seeking your views, especially as we hardly know each other – oh, forgive me. Thank you for inviting me to your party, but have you thought what war will really mean? Are you quite sure that you will be able to send some other poor creature to eternity?’

‘Mrs Smythe, I'm a soldier – death is my trade.’ Tony immediately regretted his gauche reply, remembering how hollow the same phrase had sounded when Richard Carmichael had used it, trying to impress some miss at a ball in England. Why hadn't he managed a thoughtful reply to a serious question, for as he'd handled the pistol he'd wondered just the same thing? If he returned from this campaign would he and Keenan be full of that same lethal joy that he'd seen in Finn and Kemp? Could he rejoice over death and injury? Might he join the gouged veterans in Fermoy – or, like Mr Smythe, not return at all?

‘You heard Colonel Kemp, exhorting you to fire that awful gun – I mean no disrespect – only when you could be sure of killing with it. Have you prayed about this, can you tell me that Christian nations, today, are really not able to settle their arguments in some other way?’

‘But this war is a just one, someone must protect Turkey from being bullied.’ Morgan was struggling now. He'd read the Parliamentary debates in the papers and whilst he would much have preferred to adopt Keenan's stance that, as a soldier, he'd go anywhere and fight anyone he was told to, he knew that wouldn't do for the intense Mrs Smythe. Where were the barrack God-botherers when you needed them, Morgan thought, and why couldn't this comely woman pester his father and not him?

‘Can any act of war or killing be described as just, Mr Morgan? If you really believe that God could smile on those who seek to kill in his name, then I can only pray for you. Forgive my saying such things in your home on this your last night here, but I have to let you know how much I hate the idea of war and all the unhappiness it will unleash.’ The strident note had quite gone from Mrs Smythe's voice and her eyes were cast down almost demurely.

Tony wondered if his father had seen this side of Amelia. She'd made her points with a persuasive passion that had made him think seriously about what he was embarking upon for the first time. Could he continue to hide behind the simplistic arguments that his brother subalterns used and the jingoism of the press? Keenan and the other soldiers might be able to shelter behind the claims that they weren't paid to think or reason, but he was an officer who, if all this talk came to anything at all, would be required to lead men to their deaths.

Later, when cleaning and balancing his gift he questioned whether he would be able to do the things that war required. Would he be capable of taking this elegant tool and bludgeoning another man with it as Kemp had done?

Dinner finished late and Morgan was almost immediately asleep. Every creak of the house, though, every dream-grunt from Hector in the kitchen below woke him, making him check the half-hunter by the light of the moon, but still Mary didn't come. On this, of all nights, he wanted to see her to say a leisured goodbye, to store up memories that would warm him in whatever solitude and latitudes lay ahead. Then, with the first signs of light, his door opened and Mary – stepping wide in her bare feet to avoid a squeaky board – was with him. Cold beneath the eiderdown, her kisses covered his mouth and face, as she slipped from her nightdress and reached for him in one well-practised movement.

‘I'm sorry to be so late, your honour, but the table and kitchen won't clean themselves and James Keenan had a wee party as well as you!’ Her mouth tasted of drink.

‘I hope the Staff were kind to him … Oh, Mary.’ She smiled up from the shadows deep below the sheets.

‘We were, and herself said that we had to find you a gift, just like your father did. Trouble was, we had nothing to give you, so I thought this might answer.’

‘I'm glad that you came to give me the present and not Mrs O'Connor.’ The joke was old but Mary trembled silently as only she could. When she laughed her whole body was consumed by it. Her eyes screwed tight shut, the lines about them deep-etched. It delighted Morgan.

‘Tony, take me with you, I can't be without you.’ The mirth quickly faded. All the bounce, all the confidence had gone from her, her face crumpled as she pushed her head into his shoulder.

A great surge of joy and pleasure welled up through Tony as the idea seized him, but then it died as quickly as it was born. ‘Don't be daft, girl, we're going to war. There'll be time enough to catch up once I'm back.’

It was as if he'd punched her. From sweet softness and warmth she turned to blazing fury, hurling herself from the bed, her eyes alight, her whole body shaking with anger. ‘If I'm not good enough for you, Lieutenant-almighty-bloody-Morgan, I know someone who thinks I am. Well then, I shall accept ordinary James Keenan of Clonakilty's proposal of marriage – he's twice the man you'll ever be!’ She gathered her clothes around the gifts that nature had so generously given her and stormed from the room.

Morgan winced as the bedroom door banged yet again in the early morning. There was no denying how he felt about the girl, but he had hoped that the war would somehow magically resolve things. Knowing Mary, though, she would certainly carry-out her threat and no doubt conspire to embark with the regiment for whatever adventures lay ahead, married – goddamn her – to the soldier who would always be at his elbow. He groaned and turned into his pillow.

Handshakes, then Finn driving the jaunty. More goodbyes and stowing of gear before the coach took them on to the station at Cork and then to the Dublin packet which was full of officers and men from the Irish garrisons and others, like them, who were returning from leave. In the last, easy familiarity before the tendrils of the regiment coiled round both of them, Keenan and Morgan smoked together at the rail.

‘So, sir, Glassdrumman will miss you and I expect Miss Hawtrey will as well.’

‘Well, Keenan, we'll have to see, there's much ground to travel. And what of you, I was surprised that you didn't get down to Clonakilty to see your people. Did you write?’

Keenan tinkered with his stubby, clay pipe. ‘I did, sir, Mary gave me a hand with the letter, so. Jewel of a girl, that Mary.’

Morgan darted him a look, expecting some embarrassing reproach. But no, Keenan's face was set and sincere.

‘Sir, I need to ask you something. Mary's coming to join me in England and we're to marry. Will we be allowed to live together in barracks?’

Morgan couldn't believe what he was being told. So, Mary had been true to her word yet Private Keenan gave no sign of knowing what his future wife's actual relationship with his master really was. His departure for war, for deeds and glory, should have simplified things. Instead, the piquant little treat that he'd been pleased to dip into every time he came back to Ireland on leave was going to follow him back to the Regiment, married to his own servant.

‘You will, Keenan, but if we do get sent to war, there'll only be a handful of wives allowed to come with us and you'd better get used to the idea that a newly wed wife is unlikely to be selected.’ But even as Morgan replied to Keenan, he knew that if Mary was half the girl he thought she was, then she would somehow manage to be with them. He sighed deeply to himself.

THREE Weedon Barracks

There was a stamp of feet as the sentries stepped smartly from their wooden boxes outside the barrack gates and presented arms. Morgan touched his hat in acknowledgement of the salute whilst noting how both men had been alert enough to see an officer in plain clothes approaching in a civilian carriage. What he had failed to see was James Keenan's silent but frantic signals to his confederates from the open top of the vehicle: anything to avoid an officer's displeasure.

As they rattled through the gates of the modern, red-brick and tile barracks, Keenan couldn't resist the time-honoured greeting to those whose lot it was to stand guard. ‘It'll never get better if you pick-et, you bastards!’ whilst he flicked the oldest of discourtesies.

‘For the love of God stop it, Keenan,’ Morgan had half-expected something ribald from his servant as they approached Weedon Barracks – he had been in tearing spirits ever since they had boarded the carriage at Northampton station a couple of hours before.

‘We're not at Glassdrumman now and I've trouble enough with the adjutant without you adding to it!’ He was more giving voice to his own thoughts than trying to reprove Keenan, who in any event ignored his master, leaping from the carriage as it approached the Officers' Mess and busying himself with bags and cases.

‘Your honour will want to be in uniform? The other gentlemen are wearing their shell-jackets, sir, so I'll lay yours out with your sword and cap. Try not to tear that trouser strap again, sir, I had a devil of a job with it last time!’

Keenan's veneer of discipline had always been thin. The time at home in Ireland together had only helped to erode it further, but he could at least be trusted to help Morgan get the all-important details of dress right. He'd noticed that other regiments didn't seem so particular about things as the 95th, but then they had a depth of history and savoir-faire that his corps didn't. Raised only thirty or so years before, what they lacked in self-confidence was made up for by what was officially described as ‘attention to detail’ but which often translated into military myopia.

Keenan prattled as he stored Morgan's clothes and kit in his rooms in the Mess. The doings of this cousin and that, the purchase and subsequent escape of his mother's new sow and Mary Cade's near-perfection – as if Tony needed to be reminded – were a distracting enough backdrop to his dressing. As he levered himself into his plain blue overalls, they both became aware of a commotion below his window. A single voice bellowed encouragement, then others rapidly joined in.

‘That'll be Mister Carmichael: some boy him. Must be the new draft he's got his hooks into.’ Keenan, a second-best sash half-coiled around his fist, stared out of the window into the brassy March-morning sunshine.

Richard Carmichael, paragon and fellow subaltern of the Grenadier Company, stood there in Harrow colours and the lightest and most expensive running pumps. Steaming gently, he bellowed encouragement at the assortment of soldiers who bundled in behind him. Some wore canvas slops, others football shorts and pullovers but all were spattered with mud from the cross-country run. Carmichael had obviously raced them individually over the last part of the course. Fit as a hare and knowing every inch of the route, he'd had no difficulty in coming in a long way ahead of the new men. But why, wondered Morgan wryly, had he chosen to finish the race outside the adjutant's and colonel's office?

‘Where are the new boys from, Keenan?’

‘I don't recognise any of 'em. Sir, but most have come from the Eighty-Second and some from the Sixth, Forty-Eighth and Thirty-Sixth they say. Bag o' shite says I.’

Shite or not, they looked pretty good to Morgan. All volunteers, they seemed big and healthy and would more than plug the gaps left by the 95th's sick. Throwing the window open, he was about to shout across to his brother subaltern when his ear caught a strange thing. As each man came puffing home, Carmichael seemed to be addressing them in their native accents. The Irish and Scots were simple enough to imitate, the odd Geordie got a passable greeting, those from the slums of Derby and Birmingham probably recognized their own flattened vowels, but he saved his best effort for the pair of West Countrymen. They were yokelled in fine style, the young officer having been sharp enough even to learn their names. Carmichael was obviously delighted with his efforts, but Morgan couldn't help but notice the men's wooden faces.

As all the others trooped away a lone figure wheezed in. Younger, smaller, fatter and redder than any of the others, he panted across the finish line. His chest and shoulders heaved as he stooped, hands on thighs.

‘Hey, Pegg, you fat little sod, what about ye?’

‘Keenan, will you kindly remember where you are?’ Morgan elbowed him away from the window but not, he fancied before he saw a movement in the adjutant's office opposite.

Podgy Pegg even at seventeen, he had a man's appetite for ale and women that had him constantly in trouble, but his cockiness usually saw him right.

‘Now then, Mr Morgan, sir, welcome 'ome.’ Pegg braced his chubby arms to his sides – he was just about able to control his breathing enough now to speak coherently. ‘Mr Carmichael's got me showing the new 'uns around the place. Didn't know that meant runnin' with the bleeders an all.’ The warmth had gone from his voice, but instantly returned. ‘How's that Jimmy Keenan twat got on, sir?’

‘Less of the twat, lardy.’ Keenan's hayrick head now jutted from the other window and he was back at full volume. ‘I'm to be wed to Mr Morgan's maid.’

‘Keenan, please, the adjutant has no desire to know that; just get my things ready, will you?’

The commanding officer wanted to speak to the officers in the Mess. Many of the bachelors had been asked to find rooms in the town so that space could be made for a dining-room where they could all eat together. Now it was to be used for Colonel Webber-Smith's address and it buzzed with talk as the officers assembled. Almost all of them were there, including the captain and both subalterns of the Grenadier Company.

Morgan pushed his sword and cap onto the growing pile of others on the table in the hall. The officers were simply dressed in short, red jackets that flattered youthful figures but damned the portly – at thirty-two Captain James Eddington looked very much the part. Whether he had simply fallen lucky was open to question, but as far as the world was concerned, the Colonel's decision to give him command of the premier company in the regiment – the Grenadiers – was no mere chance. Now he lounged studiedly against a table, teacup in hand and whiskers just on the fashionable side of proper, curling around his collar.

‘What are your impressions of the new draft, Carmichael?’

Carmichael's hair was still wet from the tub, his skin glowing from the run.

‘Good enough, sir, but I wonder if their own regiments will have given them the discipline that they'll need to stand up to shot and shell?’

‘Well, we'll have to see about that.’ Eddington replied. ‘My only worry is that by the time we've got stuck into this war, wherever it's going to be, all those regiments that have sent men to us will need them themselves. Mark you, whatever bit of “the East” we're going to, the Russians will fight like fury and every bit of the navy and the army will be needed.’

Morgan agreed with Eddington. The newspapers had all been warning of the power of Russia, her tenacity against Napoleon and the lack of preparation within the British forces for a sustained campaign. Certainly, there had been talk of military reforms for two or three years now and improvements were being made, not least to the weaponry and commissariat, but little would be ready by the time that the troops set sail.

‘I know it goes against the grain, but thank God that the French are on our side this time …’ Eddington continued.

‘You can't mean it… the Frogs?’ interrupted Carmichael.

‘Yes, I do. There's lots of 'em – big conscript army with plenty of recent battle experience in North Africa. They gave my father a run for his money and I guess we'll be glad to have them alongside.’

Anyone else would have been laughed to scorn by Carmichael, but Eddington was not only his immediate superior, he would also deploy a lashing tongue to deflate his senior subaltern when occasion demanded it.

‘And if the Frogs let us down, we've always got the bold Ottomans to help us out.’ Morgan's joke was met by a weak laugh from everyone within earshot.

‘Well, you may mock the Turks and point to their defeat at Sinope …’ the sinking of an entire fleet by the Russians a few weeks before had caused a mixture of outrage and disdain for Britain's ally in the press, ‘… but what d'you know about Oltenitsa?’

‘Er … didn't the Russians get a bloody nose there a few months back?’ Morgan could just remember an account of the battle written by a British correspondent.

‘Yes, last November, a body of Turko cavalry and infantry whipped a much larger force of Russians up on the Danube.’ But before Eddington could continue the commanding officer and Kingsley, the adjutant, swept in.

‘Well done today with those new lads, Carmichael, you seem to have a grip of them.’ This encomium was accompanied by a quick tap on Carmichael's chest from the Colonel's folded gloves as he passed.

‘Thank you, sir, we'll soon have them up to our standard.’

‘Quite so, quite so. By the way, I see that your uncle has been given a prime job.’ Carmichael beamed with pleasure. His uncle, Sir George Cathcart, the only major-general who had seen recent active service in the Cape, had been given command of a Division. Carmichael was going to play the relationship for all that it was worth, whilst the colonel was far from ignorant to the cachet it ought to bestow on his regiment.

‘Why yes, sir, do we know yet whether we'll be in my uncle's Division?’

‘Who knows, Carmichael. It'll do your career no harm if we are.’ The Colonel laughed indulgently. ‘Now gentlemen, I've brought you all together to tell you about the realities of war.’

Morgan and the others knew that Webber-Smith was one of the few present to have seen any fighting, yet he rarely mentioned it. There was no doubt that he ran a smart and taut regiment but, with the exception of the last few weeks when the accent had, indeed, been more upon tactical matters, most of their time was spent in the drill yard. Joining just too late to be with the Regiment at the last big manoeuvres at Chobham, the stories persisted of their being foxed by the 48th, embarrassingly, the commanding officer's original corps. Expecting now to pick up some real tips on leadership in battle, they were all to be disappointed.

There were hints on the selection of sutlers, the best ways to find clean water, the need for regular inspection of the men's feet and – everyone cringed – their members, the most effective way of rigging an awning in a downpour and, in short, any number of other tricks of the trade that would stand them all in good stead during the rainy season in India. Sadly, they weren't bound for India and, spellbinding though the sixty minutes were, none of them was any the wiser about the business of death at the end of it. Morgan wondered if an ancient forty-nine-year-old shouldn't be turning his mind to dog-breeding rather than tropical agues.

As the Colonel left, Hume, the senior major, brought the room to attention and then strolled to the fireplace at the front.

‘Gentlemen, you've heard what the colonel has had to tell you about, er … campaigning: I have little to add.’

Hume was short but what the Irish would call ‘well-made’. His jacket was slightly too tight and his overalls bagged a little at the knee whilst his hair was unbrushed. But there was a composure about him that was reassuring. They all had to strain to hear what he said. He would arrange for them to see and handle the nine- and twelve-pounders of their own artillery for they were bound to need to understand them. Then, at his word, one of the Mess servants produced the new rifle which, it was rumoured, they were about to receive.

‘I trust you all know what this is….’

‘Ask Charlton, his dad makes them,’ half-whispered Carmichael to the subalterns around him. One or two sniggered at the snobbish little dig, but the others were intent upon the new weapon.

‘… and the principle upon which it fires its ball?’ Hume frowned at Carmichael but wasn't going to be distracted. There followed a ten-minute discourse on a rifle that, if they ever got their hands on it, would reduce their enemies' life expectancy very dramatically indeed.

Morgan wondered if all this talk would ever really translate into war. There would be little difficulty in loading, gauging the range, aiming and firing one of these weapons – but at another Christian?

In the name of all that was holy why had he agreed to this? The rite-of-passage that was regimental boxing usually came round once a year but this was an extra ordeal. In an effort, Morgan supposed, to draw the new drafts into the 95th's family, the Colonel had not only ordained an additional session but he had let it be known that young officers would be very strongly encouraged to fight. He'd milled well enough at school, well enough, at least, to keep him out of trouble in the ring with the soldiers.

Every year he swore not to go through it again. Private Pug-Ugly – invariably half a stone heavier and two inches taller – would come out swinging, jabbing and bashing him round the ring. Morgan usually found a reserve of fitness and skill that allowed him to survive and not disgrace himself. That, at least, was how it had gone the last three times: plucky young officer faces his man, gets as good a hiding as he gives, wins narrowly, then wears his bruises gamely round the barracks for the next few days. Subaltern and soldier-honour satisfied, everyone was content.

Everyone except Morgan. He agreed that the officers should muck-in with the men, he knew how good it was for officer prestige to chance their arm with one of the regimental bruisers – but why did he always have to be the one? The whole business appalled him, not so much the fear of getting hurt – though that was bad enough – but the dread of making a fool of himself. No matter what the commanding officer encouraged, no matter what the adjutant said, no matter how much flattery tinged with sadism he got from Carmichael and the other subalterns, he would simply refuse.

So effective had his refusal been that he now sat on the simple stool with the light, leather slips bound at the wrist. Predictably, the Grenadier's Colour-Sergeant, big, florid, Glaswegian Andrew McGucken, was a veritable pugilist. He'd immediately taken the young officer into training – all twenty-four hours of it – and now stood behind him, chafing him with a grubby towel.

‘He's just a lamb, sir.’ McGucken's view of the thug who'd just leapt into the crude, rope ring was rather different from Morgan's. Rather than gambolling, the creature bounced about his corner, thumping the air, emitting little ‘tsh-tsh’ noises like one of the new steam engines in human form. His opponent was called John Duffy and he'd recently volunteered from the 6th. His colleagues from his former corps stood as close around the ring as possible and as the bell rang, a sallow, curly-haired confederate yelled, ‘Break his face’. Duffy clearly heard, for the next four minutes were some of the most punishing that Morgan could recall.

Almost at once his nose bled. Then a splendid hook sent him staggering into the ropes in his opponent's corner, followed by a bruising jab or two to the ribs. Realizing that Duffy was more skilled than most of the men, Morgan rallied, put together some good combination punches that marked his opponent around the eyes and started to get his confidence back.

It didn't last long. Just before the bell rang to end the round, an uppercut felled him. He was suddenly on all fours, gazing at the packed dirt floor and listening to the referee counting down the seconds. He heard ‘four’ and realized that he must stand. On ‘five’ he did, brushing his gloves and coming on guard just on ‘seven’. The referee patted his shoulder and he flung himself onto his corner stool.

‘That's it, Morgan, let him exhaust himself by running round the ring after you and punching you silly. The idea is to hit him, you know.’ Carmichael, smooth, clean, brushed and polished, sneered through the ropes.

‘I don't see yous up here in the ring, sir, so shag-off unless you've got something useful to say to Mr Morgan.’ Subalterns signified little to Colour-Sergeant McGucken.

‘You've got to keep away from his right, sir. Keep circling to his left, your right, and jab with your left as hard as possible. You're doin'grand.’ The red-stained towel that was pulled away from his nostrils suggested something different, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

The second round was bruising. Morgan did his best to keep his flowing nose away from Duffy's flicking left hook, but without total success. Every time he came forward to deliver one of his crushing rights, Duffy found his mark, stinging him hard and making the bleeding worse. Just as the round was in its last seconds, though, Morgan pushed his opponent onto the back foot. Duffy tried a desperate lunge, allowed the young officer to get inside his guard and paid the price. Morgan pushed with his left, another left, both punches rocking the burly private back, before he caught him with a very creditable right on the point of the jaw. Duffy reeled; his gloves came down, but just as Morgan was closing in for what he hoped would be the kill, the bell sounded and the round ended. His opponent slunk back to his stool, bloody but determined to redress the balance. What did a fucking officer know about scrapping anyway?

The next two rounds were not the happiest of Morgan's life. What he'd achieved in round two was more than undone by his now-angry opponent. Whilst he wasn't knocked down again, Duffy concentrated on his already flooding nose, closed his left eye and seemed impervious to all of his blows – or almost impervious. At the end of the fourth, Morgan made him stagger with a left jab and stopped him with the hardest right he could muster just above his enemy's belt. More would have followed had Duffy not held him in a clinch and pushed him hard against the ropes.

As Morgan stumbled back to his corner he noticed the black drips of blood soaking into the ground. All over his torso were red weals where Duffy's punches had smeared his own blood yet with his one, good eye he could see nothing similar on his foe.

‘Well done, sir, you've got him now. See how he's slumped over?’ to Morgan's surprise, McGucken seemed to be delighted. Certainly, Duffy's head was down and his second – a corporal from the Light Company – was working overtime with towel and sponge. Morgan suspected, though, that Duffy was just husbanding his strength.

‘Get out there, Mr Morgan sir, and belt the twat in the ribs, you've broke a couple already, he's on the run.’

Now it was the last round. Morgan had four minutes to salvage the honour of the Officers' Mess, four minutes to burnish his reputation. The leaning, apparently broken Duffy, however, had other ideas. The young officer ran into a barrage of punches that made his nose fountain and blocked any vision at all from his left eye. A flurry of blows had him covering up as best he could in his own corner when broad Glasgow was bellowed into his ear.

‘See his ribs there, sir, leather the bastards!’ And leather them he did. The best right he could find landed just where the earlier blow had and Duffy faltered, both gloves came down, and he sagged back into the centre of the ring. All that now remained was for Morgan to step forward and punch mechanically at a target that could no longer defend itself. Within seconds a towel flew into the ring, within another few seconds the referee had the victor's hands above his head and seconds after that he was receiving the cheers and slaps of every officer and soldier there. He'd never do that again.

A good, hard run was just the way to shift bruises, Finn always said. Got the blood pumping round the system and washed the contusion away from the skin, Finn always said. Certainly, when he'd fallen off his horse as a boy or been in one scrape or another, the groom back at Glassdrumman had always insisted that a run was the treatment; that's why Morgan had risen early, earlier than his aching limbs and muscles would have liked, to run the four miles out of the barracks, up over Todd's Hill and then home. Now he was back, agreeably blown and with his bruised face and ribs complaining in time to the pulse of his heart. As he padded back to the Mess past the stables, though, there was a hubbub of excited voices: men laughing and hooting before breakfast suggested something intriguing.

‘Stand up!’ As Morgan rounded the corner of the stable block still panting in his shorts and jersey, half a dozen men in undress, brown, canvas trousers and shirtsleeves braced to attention.

‘Leave to carry on, sir, please?’ A well-muscled lad whom Morgan recognized as a lance-corporal from Number Three Company, bellowed with a confidence that Morgan knew was designed to hide something.

‘Please do, Corporal…’

‘Fitchett, sir, Number Three.’

‘Sorry, yes of course,’ Morgan replied. ‘Who's this? You're a jewel, ain't you?’ In the arms of one of the other men was the gamest, little Jack Russell that Morgan could remember seeing in an age. His coat was dappled and smooth, his ears short, well-pointed and alert and his eyes like the blackest of coals. As the young officer stretched forward and stroked his muzzle, a tiny pink tongue flicked out and gave him a perfunctory lick, the salute of one sportsman to another.

‘Mine, sir, name o' Derby,’ the soldier, whom Morgan didn't think he'd ever seen before replied, smiling at the officer's obvious interest.

‘Well, Derby, shall we see you at your work?’ At this all the troops relaxed. A circle of bricks three high and about ten feet across had been improvised for the ratting session which, as long as no money changed hands, was winked at in the regiment. But it was quite clear from the time of day and the bearing of the men that this was a serious, commercial affair – quite against Queen's Regulations. That's why they had been worried by the approach of an officer, until Morgan had made his tacit approval clear.

‘We shall, sir,’ the dog's owner replied in a flat, midland accent. ‘Bobby Shone, tell the officer the stakes.’

Shone, saturnine and curly, the shortest of the group, held a leather bag that squirmed and squeaked as he shook it gently. ‘Twenny rats in 'ere, sir. We fancy Derby could earn a penny or two if he gets the practise, so we thought we'd give 'im a bit of a run.’ Shone waggled the bag again. ‘Halfa-crown a shot, Miller's the shortest stake on nothing more than three minutes; Corporal Fitchett's on the clock.’

This was the crudest form of rat-baiting, but excellent training for the serious matches when one dog was pitched against others, with weight taken and handicaps allotted. The rules were simple: the dog had to kill a specified number of rats as fast as possible, the winner taking two-thirds of the purse, the runner-up the rest with a whip-round for the owner. The referee might poke a rat about to see whether it was quite dead or even shamming, but it was no more complex than that.

‘Half-a-crown's a lot of money, boys …’ Morgan replied – and it was. In barracks a private soldier could expect to see no more than ninepence a day, ‘… and I've not a penny-cent on me.’

‘Gerraway, sir, you're bloody made o' money,’ challenged Shone. ‘Anyway, your word's good. You in?’

Morgan couldn't resist. It may have been quite against the rules, but it was more than sporting blood could bear – his rank could go hang.

‘Aye, of course I am. Three minutes, five and twenty seconds for me, is it free?’ he asked, any concerns about discipline or over-familiarity with the men quite forgotten.

‘Free as a hawk, sir, but you'll be skinned by Derby, he's a terror.’ One of the other men wrote Morgan's time down on a scrap of card.

‘Right, let's see the rats.’ Corporal Fitchett craned forward over the ring as Shone emptied the bag.

Twenty black, brown, sleek forms tumbled on to the earth floor, collected themselves in less time than it took to blink and shot for the edge of the circle, clawing at the bricks to find a scrap of cover. Their pink noses twitched – sharp, yellow teeth bared, scaly tails flicking in anticipation of something terrible.

And terrible it was.

‘Go on, Derby, me bucko!’ Morgan was rapt, fists clenched, yelling along with the rest of the men as the dog became a vortex of teeth, tail and death.

Furry forms were grabbed by the neck and shaken with one, two or three swift flicks of the neck till their backbones broke; then they were tossed from Derby's mouth against the bricks, flopping dead on the grit floor below. One rash rodent had the temerity to sink its fangs into Derby's lip and grip there whilst the terrier tried to rip it free. Cling though it did, the rat couldn't survive the dashing of its body against the rough bricks and after a few short but bruising seconds, it let go and fell with its comrades, cooling quickly.

‘Thirty seconds,’ bellowed Fitchett.

‘Nineteen!’ replied the throng, as each death was exulted. ‘Twenty!’ They roared as the last rat had the life snapped from it.

‘Two minutes and fifty on the nose, goddamn!’ Corporal Fitchett's watch was held for all to see. ‘Why, the hound's a bloody goldmine.’

Great silver half-crowns were produced as the brick circle was dismantled and Shone dabbed at Derby's bitten nose with a drop of brandy.

‘Thanks, Corporal Fitchett, that was a grand few minutes, quite unexpected.’ Morgan had hardly noticed the sweat chilling him. ‘Are there any other dogs around who might challenge him?’

‘Doubt it, sir. The Armourer-Sar'nt reckons his hound will be better over thirty or more rats than Derby; says he's got more stayin’ power. Anyway, sir, we'll try 'em out against each other in the next couple o' weeks,' Fitchett replied, formal and regimental now.

‘Well, let's hope they delay the war for a wee bit then.’ The men smiled. ‘Let me know when the match is to be, if you would. I'll send James Keenan to you with the money, Corporal Fitchett, if that's acceptable?’

‘Fine, sir,’ and as Morgan left, ‘Stand up: may I have your leave to carry on, sir, please?’

The gabbled formula reminded Morgan that he'd broken every rule that it was possible to break. Not only had he connived at the men's gambling, he was now in debt to a non-commissioned officer with plenty of witnesses – and he didn't give a damn.

The rat-baiting had made him late. If it had been an ordinary wedding back in Cork then a few minutes here or there simply wouldn't signify, but because soldiers were involved and because he, an officer, was invited then everything had to be organized as if life itself depended upon it.

‘Well, it'll be a hard thing to see that prime little maid of yours married to one of the “sons of toil”, won't it?’ Carmichael lolled against the post of Morgan's door, clicking the cover of his watch open and closed. ‘You wouldn't catch me letting a piece of fluff like that off my mattress.’ The watch was slipped back into Carmichael's pocket, as a sly little grin slid across his face.

‘Well, she ain't been on my mattress, has she?’ Morgan replied just a little too quickly. ‘She's to be married to James Keenan and will have to shift for herself back here when we sail. Or, I suppose she might go back to Ireland and fall back into my father's clutches.’

‘Hmm, I wonder. You think I haven't seen how you look at each other? Mind you, if you're not man enough to keep her content, I'm quite happy to volunteer for the post myself. You certainly cut quite a dash today, why did you let Duffy give you such a hiding?’ Carmichael looked with mock concern at Morgan's cuts and rainbow bruising.

‘You weren't in too much of a hurry to chance your arm, were you, Carmichael?’

‘Why keep a dog and bark yourself? I leave that sort of brutish stuff to the likes of you and those with horny hands – proper officers should lead, not brawl. Also – hope you don't mind me saying it – it's one thing being manly with the troops and letting them thump you about, but should you really be rattin' with them? Bit familiar, don't you think? Give your darling Mary my very fondest wishes.’ Carmichael sauntered off down the back stairs of the Mess.

How the hell, Morgan wondered, had Carmichael found out about this morning's sport so quickly?

Pegg strode as hard and as fast as he could to keep in step with Morgan. Fiddling with belts and sashes with no servant to help him had made him late for the self-same servant's wedding. Now the only two Protestants to be invited to an otherwise exclusively Catholic service were racing to be on time, with poor Pegg in an ecstasy of unease. He was to accompany the two Irish fiddlers from another company on his fife at James Keenan's wedding.

He'd arrived to escort his officer in plenty of time. He'd scuffed the gravel loudly outside Morgan's room; he'd cleared his throat so hard and so often that he now worried that he wouldn't be able to sound his fife; he'd even considered trying out a tune or two just to hurry the young gentleman along. Then, as desperation overtook him and he was about to leave Mr Morgan to his own devices, the officer came out of the Mess like a rabbit with a ferret on his scut.

‘Come on, Pegg, stop hanging around, we'll be late, boy.’

They pelted off to the little church about a quarter of a mile from the barracks. Keenan had enlisted Morgan's help to find a priest to marry them at short notice and he'd lit upon one of the few Catholic deacons who were to escort the troops to the East. As luck would have it, there was a nearby Catholic church whose incumbent was delighted to allow it to be used for a regimental wedding, especially with the promise of war.

‘Jesus, sir, lucky fucking Jimmy Keenan.’

As they rounded the corner thirty seconds late, it was obvious that the groom, bride and the knot of guests were waiting for Himself to arrive. The men were all in uniform, scarlet and blue bisected by white belts, their shakoes set with flowers as the only civilian concession, and at their centre stood Mary. Morgan's stomach tightened at the sight of her. Again, she'd contrived to look entirely out of place beside the men yet totally relaxed with them. A light blue, narrow-waisted, satin dress printed with sprigs of flowers was complemented by the garland set in her hair and the posy that she carried. At her throat was a beaded necklace that could have passed for sapphires whilst her hands and wrists were covered in snowy-white buttoned gloves that Morgan knew to be the height of fashion. She could have strolled arm-in-arm with him in Phoenix Park or, come to that, Hyde Park and been more than a credit.

Mary smiled at James Keenan. A handsome-enough man, his rough scarlet serge and his weather-reddened, calloused hands contrasted uneasily with his wife-to-be's elegance. He had asked Morgan if he might borrow some of his pomade for his hair and whiskers and applied it liberally. Now he stood on the church steps with his betrothed, his hair glistening in equal measure to the beam on his face.

‘Ah, sir, it's yourself, thank you for coming.’ Keenan, bareheaded, brought his heels together and stiffened whilst a dozen hands flew to the peaks of the shakoes around him. Mary executed a mocking little curtsey whilst she stared into his eyes from below her lashes. She said not a thing.

‘Keenan, I'm so pleased for you both,’ Morgan lied as he pulled off his glove and clasped the groom's hand. ‘May I kiss your future wife?’ Morgan saw how Mary bridled, but such a gesture was required.

‘Go on, Mr Morgan, sir, help yourself.’ For a split second Morgan wondered at Keenan's choice of words, but no, they were innocent enough.

One peach-like, gently powdered cheek was presented with a coolness that struck him like a slap. As his lips brushed against her he caught that same scent that haunted his bedclothes back in Glassdrumman.

‘You've made a wonderful choice of husband, Mary, but I don't know how my family will manage without you.’ None of the meaning was lost on Mary and Tony could almost feel the lash of the reply that such a comment would receive in other circumstances. She said not a thing.

The service was short and the hymns were few. Any lack of melody amongst the singers was disguised by the skill of the fiddlers and the shrieks of Lance-Corporal Healey's toddlers. The poor priest had to contend with their babble whilst the first note of every hymn set them howling.

‘Can't Mrs H tek the little sods out, sir?’ whispered Pegg to Morgan.

He made no reply, for the Irish audience would tolerate outrages from children that no English one would. Earlier, Morgan had had to suppress an oath when one of his glistening toe-caps had been scuffed by a rampaging Healey brat. His mother had paid not the slightest attention.

There could be no honeymoon. With the regiment preparing for war, the best that Private and Mrs Keenan could manage was a ceilidh in the other ranks' canteen. A handful of the wives and their husbands had set about the barn-like structure, weaving ivy and other greenery through some bunting, then setting up Union flags and an enormous, crêpe shamrock. A somewhat crumpled, slightly crookedly-painted banner read, ‘Good luck to you both’. Morgan remembered it from the last wedding party he'd attended there.

The group was pathetically small, clustered around the fire at one end of the hall. The priest came, grinned, downed two glasses of whiskey and fled, leaving Morgan as the only impediment to a wholesale onslaught on the liquor. But the group's temperance lasted about as long as it took for the priest to disappear from sight. As soon as his cassock had floated out, the fiddlers and Pegg started to play. Now tots of whiskey many times the size of that given to the divine were handed round.

It was clear to Morgan that the novelty of his presence would very soon wear off. Taking the first opportunity, he drained his whiskey and strode over to Mary, for it had to be done. ‘May I be the first man to dance with Mrs Keenan?’ He gave a little bow.

‘I'd be delighted, Lieutenant Morgan, sir.’ She stood and dropped him a much deeper curtsey than earlier, smiling and bobbing her ringlets most becomingly.

Morgan did his best at the reels and steps, never a natural dancer. The soldiers and women looked on indulgently, just pleased to see one of Themselves mixing with them. His clumsiness was at odds with Mary's easy grace, a grace that he remembered so well from an entirely different setting.

The dancing done, he pumped hands, slapped backs and left. His walk back to the Mess was the loneliest of his life.

‘Come on, Morgan, there's no point in loafing here.’

The days since the wedding had been frantic as last-minute preparations were made for departure and this was to be the regiment's last evening in Weedon, for tomorrow they were to leave for Portsmouth and embarkation for the mysterious ‘East’. So, Morgan had accepted Carmichael's invitation to join him at his rooms in Weedon to ‘raise Cain’.

Carmichael's idea of Cain-raising held little appeal to Morgan. He already spent more than enough time with the regiment's foremost scion and self-appointed rake and, besides, any quiet moment allowed his thoughts to drift back to Mary, of seeing her all the time yet knowing that she was beyond his reach. But Carmichael had chivvied and cajoled him in the Mess in front of the others. The invitation was issued only to him and whilst he knew that he would have to endure a battery of stings and innuendo, even that was better than being alone.

Meanwhile, Keenan had been in an almost indecent rush to get his master respectably into civilian clothes, out of barracks and off his hands. Normally, there would have been much smoothing of Morgan's beaver hat, the watch chain would have had to be fixed just so, and there would be a final rub of a duster over his boots before the young officer was fit to be seen in public. The married Keenan was a different, more perfunctory creature. Morgan found himself adjusting his own braces, fitting his own cuff-links and pulling his stock to just the right position whilst there was little of the barrack tittle-tattle that made such occasions so invaluable.

Now, instead of learning why Private Ghastly felt himself so aggrieved when Lance-Corporal Nasty told him off for kitchen fatigues (after all, they had been good mates when they were privates together, hadn't they?), there was little except a few scrappy questions about what Russ would look like and whether Turkish girls chewed tobacco. His soldier-servant seemed to be in a tearing hurry to get back to the barrack corner that had been screened off with an army blanket for the newly-weds. Morgan understood the urgency only too well.

Carmichael's rooms were a cliché. A bedroom, sitting room and bathroom looked from the first floor of a small hotel onto the cobbled main street of the town below. The wooden floor was awash with coloured woollen rugs whilst the furniture was old but studiedly comfortable. He'd had the walls redecorated in a fashionable lemon (as advised, Morgan recalled, by some London society piece) and on them hung a selection of hunting, boxing and naval prints. His greatest conceit, though, was a pastel nude that hung above his bed.

Morgan's already failing interest in Cain had dwindled to nothing by the time that he arrived. Carmichael's man had just been sent home and with a fire blazing and the gentle light of the oil lamps, Morgan hoped that the next few hours could be spent in an alcoholic cloud, forgetting his gloom and discussing the adventure that lay before them. He might learn Carmichael's secret of shining whenever the colonel or the adjutant were about – he might even learn to like the ambitious, arrogant bastard a little. But no, Cain was a creature of the streets. In high spirits, Carmichael stepped out, dandified in strapped trousers, a waistcoat of the darkest green, stock and pin and a coat cut fashionably long.

They sank a tot of whiskey apiece in the Rodney and the Granby. But in both there were some of their own corporals or sergeants toping steadily. The young officers passed a civil few sentences with them, trying not to make it look as though they were bolting their liquor before moving on. There would be plenty of time to rub shoulders with the men in the next few months.

They settled, unrecognized, in the snug of the the Plough. More drink came and went whilst their talk gathered pace. Carmichael, though, had been distracted from the moment that two unescorted girls came into the room. They sat down a little way from the fire and began to commune in a geyser of giggles and whispers. Sitting in another corner were four young men, farmers or their sons judging by their clothes. Their volume, too, increased as they drank until one of the braver ones rose, very slightly unsteady, and approached the girls.

Despite a lively, good-natured exchange where the farmer's boy did his best to impress both women with promises of untold largesse, he was rebuffed. With a shrug and upturned palms he walked back to his friends.

‘Missing a bed-warmer now that sweet Mary's tucked up with Keenan, Morgan?’ But before Morgan could react to this jibe, Carmichael had lost interest, sensing a different and much more interesting diversion.

The next hour or so were to remain a whiskey blur to Morgan. The girls joined them, they drank, they laughed a little too loudly at the young gentlemen's wit, showing their teeth too readily behind their too-red lips and in no time the four of them found themselves in Carmichael's rooms.

‘Just get some more coal would you, Morgan? We can't let the fire get any lower.’ Carmichael made it quite clear that Morgan had no choice. He knew where the coal hole was, but in the few minutes that it took him to refill the bucket in the dark and to clatter back upstairs, Carmichael and Jane – by far the prettier of the two girls – had disappeared. With wits dulled by drink, Morgan was just about to enquire of Molly where they had gone when a burst of laughter from behind the firmly-closed bedroom door betrayed them. Re-stoking the fire bought him a few minutes to think whilst Molly, silent except for a few rustles and sips from her glass, sat on the sofa behind him.

The lamps had been trimmed low. As he turned, their forgiving light played over Molly who lounged back on the cushions, glass in hand and breasts quite naked. She smiled and did her best to look attractive.

‘Get dressed, girl.’ Morgan was irritated with himself for being drawn into Carmichael's scheme; he reached into his pocket and put a silver crown in Molly's hand. ‘Here, there's better ways of earning money than that,’ and he rattled down the stairs and away as quickly as he could.

By halfway back to barracks Morgan's canter had slowed to a quick-step. The sentries came to the salute, and raising his top hat, he went over to speak to them. Whilst he had no desire whatsoever to talk, he remembered his first captain's advice when he joined the regiment – always be bothered with the troops: one day they'll save your life or your reputation. They weren't from his company, but he recognized them both. In their early twenties they were older soldiers – Morgan mused on why neither was a lance-corporal and how such old hands had managed to get caught for a greenhorn's duty like this.

‘I'm sorry, I can't remember your name, nor where you're from.’ The taller of the two had a round, pock-marked face that split into a surprised grin now that an officer was talking to him.

‘Francis Luff, sir, Number Five Company.’ The man's breath wisped into the cold night air as his gloved fingers played on the stock of his rifle.

‘No, I know that, where's your home town, man?’

‘Oh, sorry, sir, Hayling Island – our Pete's in your company.’ Luff seemed to have no neck at all. His head jutted straight out of the thick collar of his greatcoat, bobbing now with pleasure, the moonlight reflected off the brass ‘95’ on the front of his soft woollen cap.

‘I know him well, he's a good man, up for a tape I'm told. What about you, you must be due promotion soon?’

‘Only thing Luffy'll get, sir, is a bleedin' tape-worm.’ One of the oldest jests in the troops' lexicon was delivered in a flat Manchester accent by the other man, provoking dutiful laughs.

‘You're doing well, lads: stand easy and for pity's sake keep warm.’ Men cheered, bonhomie dispensed, easy, pleasant little job done, it was a good point to leave. Both men snapped their left foot forward, clasped their hands across their bellies and pushed their rifles into the crooks of their arms. The cosiness of the banter was stark against the long, lethal gleam of their bayonets.

‘He's a decent bloke, that Paddy Morgan. Pete says 'e'll be all right when we get to fight.’ The conversation had pleased Luff disproportionately.

‘Don't s'pose it'll come to that. We'll go down to Portsmouth tomorrer an' be stuck there for ever, knowing our luck. Mind you, Mr Morgan did well in the ring t'other night, wouldn't mind having him as our officer, not a stuck-up sod like some o' the others.’ The sentries' muttered conversation helped to pass the long hours of their watch.

The heavy metal key clunked into the back door of the Mess. Morgan's room still felt warm against the cold of the night and as he stripped off coat, hat and muffler he twitched back his curtains. The barracks slept – but not entirely. Over there, at an end of the Grenadier Company's lines he fancied that he could see just one light burning dimly.

FOUR Bulganak

‘Now look, yous …’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken held the heavy rifle across his waist and pointed at the graduated rear-sight, ‘… it's no good buggerin' about adjustin' the bloody thing if you don't know how far away the target is, so you've got to be able to estimate the range accurately, or it's all a waste of fuckin' time.’

The Grenadier Company gaggled about him as the sun beat down on the eighty-odd men, all of whom swiped to keep the flies out of their eyes, ears and noses. They had been waiting in Varna on the west coast of the Black Sea for a fortnight or more whilst the politicians decided what to do next, nobody quite knowing whether they would be sent inland to help the Turks on the Danube or embark on their ships again.

‘Luff, tell us how we estimate range.’ McGucken picked the boy out from the rear of the crowd where his attention had begun to wander. He was looking at the scorched, brown Bulgarian fields and hedges where they stretched down to the sea and thinking how different it all was from the green of Hayling Island.

‘At five hundred you can make out colours; at four hundred limbs and the head become distinct; at three hundred features become visible and at two hundred all details can be discerned.’ Luff intoned the rubric that they had all been taught.

‘Good, well done Luff; why were you being so fuckin' thick about things in Turkey?’ McGucken had almost despaired of Luff and some of the others when the fleets had paused in Scutari where the Allied forces had been gathered before the voyage into the Black Sea. It was there that the new Minié rifle had been served out to most of the regiments and the first tentative shots been tried against paper targets pinned to wooden billets. Instructors had been sent from the units who had received the weapons first, amazing everyone with the accuracy and penetration of the half-inch-wide lead bullets that were so very different from the round balls of the old, smooth-bored muskets which they carried up until then.

‘Dunno, Colour-Sar'nt… just difficult to get the hang of, ain't it?’ replied Luff, who had struggled more than most to understand that the new weapon was so very different from the one that they had been used to. He'd been quick enough to understand that the bullet spun and was more accurate due to the rifling, that it dropped in quite a steep curve the further it flew and that you had to allow for this by tinkering around with the iron sight at the rear of the barrel. But he and several others had a real problem with estimating range.

‘Aye, well just think about what you repeated to me, don't just chant it like some magic bloody Papish prayer: understand it and keep practising.’ McGucken discovered that the boys from the land and the plough had picked the idea up quite quickly, whilst townies like Luff had taken much longer to grasp things. So, he'd taught them the words of the manual by rote, but whether they understood it properly was quite a different matter.

‘S'pose that pair yonder were Russian infantry …’ McGucken pointed across the fields to two elderly peasants who were digging in a field, ‘… what would you set your sights at to hit them, Luff?’

The boy held his hand up to shade his eyes against the sun, revealing a great wet patch at his armpit. The troops had been allowed to parade for training in their grey shirtsleeves to spare them from the heat and to save their already shabby scarlet coatees from further wear. They had just received the order to cease shaving as well, apparently in an effort to save water, but as far as McGucken was concerned, it had just given the men an excuse to let their smartness and turnout drop off even further.

‘'Bout four 'undred, I'd say.’ A general mutter of agreement greeted Luff's estimate. ‘But are we ever goin' to shoot at any bastard, or will we just arse about 'ere gettin' cholera, Colour-Sar'nt?’

‘A very good question, son.’ McGucken had been having just the same discussion in the Sergeants' Mess last night. They had arrived in Bulgaria fully expecting to be in action alongside the Turks in no time at all, but they had done nothing for weeks now except train and move camp every time there was another outbreak of cholera. Some said the Russians had surrendered and the whole shooting match would be packed on its boats and sent home, but the papers insisted that the Allies would sail against the Russian ports in the north. ‘I reckon we'll be off for Sevastopol once the high-ups can get the politicos to make their minds up.’

‘See … vas … tow … pol…’ The men played with the word, liking its exotic sound.

‘Where's that then, Colour-Sar'nt?’ Luff voiced all of their thoughts.

‘Couple of hundred miles that way.’ McGucken pointed out to sea where three French men-of-war smoked past. ‘It's the Russians' great big bastard anchorage for their fleet and the papers say that there's no point in comin' this far an' then goin' home without a fight. So, you'd best learn how to estimate range then, hadn't you?’ There was a tepid hum amongst the men.

‘Now, how far away's that haystack … Shortt?’ McGucken was as bored with the lounging about as his men were, but as he looked around their downy, sunburnt faces and their earnest, furrowed brows he wondered just how many of them would live to tell their mothers and fathers what a Russian infantryman really looked like.

‘They've got to land us south of Sevastopol, it makes no sense to go to the north.’ Carmichael seemed very sure of himself as Eddington and both his subalterns pored over a chart showing the coast of the Crimea.

‘Well, you'd think so. All these rivers that flow into the Black Sea will be perfect defensive positions and the captain tells me that there's no really suitable beach much south of here.’ Eddington's manicured finger hovered on the map just south of Eupatoria, thirty miles at least from the Allies' target, Sevastopol. Like a stepladder, the rivers bisected the coastal plain, each one a major obstacle to the 60,000-strong French and British army.

‘But if we go to the south we'll be that much closer to Sevastopol and we might catch Russ off guard?’ Morgan saw how unlikely that was from the deep, coloured contours of the map. There were only a couple of points where a landing from the sea would be possible and those, according to the chart, were well-established ports.

‘Closer, certainly, but we would have to force either Balaklava or Kamiesch and the Russians will have made that very difficult indeed. No, the captain reckons we're for the north – that's where the only suitable beaches are – and then we'll have to tramp down parallel to the sea. There's so little cavalry that we won't be able to go too far inland and the colonel says that if we do land northwards then the plan is to hug the coast. That way we've got the fleets to victual us and we can march under the lee of their guns. The only question is, who gets to march closer to the ships?’ Eddington looked at the pair with a slight smile.

‘It'll be the bloody French, pound to a penny. They'll turn us inside out every chance they get, you see. My uncle, sir George Cathcart, says his people almost came to blows with them in Turkey.’ Carmichael was never slow to remind people of his connections, nor to criticize the French. Only the Turks had proved more unpopular with the troops than the French so far and all but a handful of the officers followed the fashion of berating Britain's ally whenever they could.

‘Yes, my father got a boatload of 'em in Bantry back before Waterloo. They said they were ship-wrecked but they turned out to be spies. Hanged the lot.’ Morgan could hear the relish in his father's words as his only bit of real service against Napoleon was rehearsed time and again during long dinners at home.

‘Just be glad that the French are with us this time, they've had much more recent experience of campaigning than most of us and what I've seen of them so far looks pretty businesslike. We'll see how they fight, but my father learned to respect them in Spain and at Waterloo, so hold your scorn for the Russians.’ Eddington could be infuriating, sometimes.

The fleets surged on across the Black Sea. A pall of black coal-smoke hung with them on the following breeze, the steamers deliberately slowing to stay abreast of the sailing ships. The coast of the Crimea was distantly sighted, a lookout in the masts far above assuring the captain that what they could see was Sevastopol.

‘And if we can see them …’ Eddington snapped shut his glass, ‘… then they can see us. We must be heading north, and there'll be no surprise for Russ. So, gentlemen, we land tomorrow and must be ready to fight. Inspect every weapon, every round of ammunition and take a good look at feet, socks and the men's shoes. Colour-Sar'nt, please check that Braden has enough leather and nails with him for running repairs once we're ashore.’ Eddington had gone over all these fine details a dozen times already, Braden, the company's cobbler having his scraps of leather and hobnails scrutinized more times in a week than in the last five years.

As dawn broke, there it was. The armada rode at anchor almost a mile off shore, gazing at a low line of dunes topped with grass in a crescent-shaped bay that the chart told them was known as ‘Kalamita’. The lead-grey sky loured over a scene that few would forget for the rest of their days and when the papers subsequently dubbed it ‘Calamity Bay’, most agreed.

‘Just remind me what our good captain had to say about this wretched landing?’ Major Hume had squelched up to the Grenadier Company's three officers as they lay in the grass-studded sand-dunes. ‘“Still as a mill-pond” and “dry as a bone” wasn't it?’

The captain of the Himalaya had told them all how smoothly the landing would go and how they would all be ashore in no time, simply stepping from the improvised landing rafts onto the beach.

‘Are all your men as soaked as I am, Eddington?’ Hume had been scurrying about between the companies checking the state of equipment and ammunition at the commanding officer's request.

Eddington's company was amongst the last to land and, like the others, they had first been thrown about by a boisterous surf and then floundered into three feet of chilling water, despite everything the navy had promised. Now they all sat amongst the tussocks, boots off, wringing the salt water out of their socks.

‘To the skin, sir.’ Eddington had produced a towel from his haversack with which he was rubbing vigorously at his feet. He'd undone the straps that held his trousers tight below the instep of his boots, now the bits of leather and tiny buckles flailed around his ankles. ‘But Colour-Sergeant McGucken had the presence of mind to tell the men to keep their pouches above their heads, so our ammunition should be sound; he's just checking it now.’

In the background McGucken, apparently totally unaffected by the ordeal by brine, stalked amongst the sprawling troops reminding the sergeants to inspect every man's supply of wax-paper-wrapped rounds.

‘You're lucky to have McGucken, you know, Eddington.’ Hume looked over as the Scot went quietly about his business.

‘I know, sir, we got a good deal when he came to us from the Thirty-Sixth,’ Eddington replied.

‘He was particularly good on the rafts, sir.’ Morgan interjected. ‘Most of the boys were bloody terrified of the waves but he just took the rise out of them and kept them calm.’ Morgan had been surprised how scared the men had been of the sea, until he realized how few of them could swim. Every officer had been taught the gentlemanly art of swimming just as surely as they had learnt to ride a horse, but other than for some farmers' boys, it was a skill that few of the soldiers had mastered.

‘Yes, he's a good fellow,’ Hume continued, ‘I have to say, if any of the boys had been dunked with sixty-five pounds of shot and kit on their backs, I don't suppose we'd have seen them again – not alive at least. Now, let me know when you're ready to move, Eddington, I'm amazed that we've had no interference from the Russians thus far,’ Hume added before moving off to have much the same conversation with Number Six Company close by.

As the 95th had come ashore, they had seen the Rifles in the sand-dunes above the beach, their dark green uniforms bobbing about the rough grass on guard against an expected counter-attack, whilst the French skirmishers had done the same, their bugles shrieking incessantly in a way that was to become all too familiar to the British. But only a few seedy Cossacks on hairy ponies had looked on until the first Allied troops appeared – providing just enough excitement to distract the men from their sopping clothes.

‘Dear God, it's starting to rain, now …’ Eddington looked up at the dark, Crimean skies, ‘… as if we're not wet enough already. Right, you two, I want sentries posted and the men in their blankets as soon as we're stood down by the adjutant. Don't let the men sit around yarning, it'll be a hard day tomorrow and they'll need as much sleep as possible.’

The two subalterns saluted and moved off to join their men. Soon, with their weapons piled in little pyramids, the troops were bedded down, all of the regiment's seven companies stretched next to each other. Morgan looked at the blanket-wrapped forms and was reminded of one vast farrow of grey piglets. Nobody was going to get much sleep with the enemy to hand and the rain setting-in, he thought, but at least they looked tidy, a sergeant's dream.

Men settled and sentries posted, Morgan flung himself down next to the spitting camp fire that the servants had managed to light for the officers. Keenan and the other batmen were stirring at a stew made from the pork that everyone – officers and soldiers – had been issued before they disembarked, the smell of which seemed like ambrosia. The light played off their faces. Collars turned up against the wind and wet, soft caps pulled down hard, from almost every pair of lips jutted either pipe or cigar. Keenan had adopted the old soldiers' wheeze of smoking his little, black, clay pipe with the bowl pointing down away from the rain, bits of tobacco stuck to his stubbly lips.

‘Dear God, I shall never be able to wear this in Dublin again.’ Morgan, like all the other novices to war, was doing as he was told and wearing ‘Review Order’, his best set of everything. His swallow-tailed, scarlet coatee and heavy, bullion wings had made a serious hole in the Morgan family coffers and he could remember how he was made to twist and turn around for Father and the Staff at Glassdrumman in his new regimentals, self-conscious and suspicious of their smiles. He wore those very clothes now, strapped about with belts, bottles and bullets and topped by a soaked greatcoat.

‘The men seem happy enough now we're off that wretched ship.’ Carmichael, predictably, had the slimmest, most expensive of cheroots in his mouth. Even the smoke slid stylishly onto the breeze.

‘I'd be a damn sight happier for them if they could get a decent night's sleep, though. The bloody cholera will be back unless we keep their strength up. Any sign of it, either of you?’ Captain Eddington was as much checking that his officers had done their jobs as showing concern for the men of his company.

The men's health had been much better at sea, but despite the kindness of the captain and the crew, it had become fashionable to complain about them, the ungainliness of the ship and about all matters nautical. Carmichael had been amongst the most vocal.

‘Carry out your normal rounds, you two, better make it every two hours this close to the Russians, and which one of you wants the stand-to slot?’

‘I'll do it, sir.’ Morgan knew that if the men slept little that night then the officers would sleep even less. It would be far better to be supervising the dawn ritual of every man standing-to-arms, kit packed, weapons cleaned and ready, than trying to get a last few minutes in drenched blankets.

He was right. Both subalterns took turn and turn about to visit the sentries – all of whom were gratifyingly alert – before rolling themselves up on the ground in an attempt to drift into unconsciousness. But when they rose in the dark just before dawn everyone was stiff, soggy and bug-eyed. They struggled almost gratefully into their belts and equipment, wiping the water off their rifles and checking their ammunition to make sure that the bundles of cartridges had kept dry. For half an hour they waited, poised, ready to fight until daylight was fully there, then they stood down. Damp charges were drawn from barrels, breakfast fires were lit, little domestic scenes sprang up everywhere.

The men's morning bacon was just starting to sizzle when two shots rang out. Hard in front of where the men were cooking and inside the chain of outlying sentries, the bangs had men scuttling for their kit and weapons, sergeants and corporals shouting, kettles knocked over, the whole company in a lather.

‘What in Christ's name is going on? Sar'nt Ormond, stop dithering and get the men back to their stand-to positions.’ That was precisely what the Sergeant was doing, but it didn't save him from a tongue-lashing from Carmichael.

‘Beat to arms, Pegg.’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken's crisp order to the drummer seemed to steady Carmichael a little until, it was discovered that the boy was missing. ‘Where's bloody Pegg, has anyone seen him?’ McGucken's voice was already tinged with concern.

‘His drum and kit's here, Colour-Sar'nt’ shouted one of the other drummers who had gone in search of the boy.

‘Just beat to arms then, son, he can't 'ave gone far.’

As the tattoo rolled out, the hubbub in the Grenadier Company's lines soon infected the rest of the regiment. In no time, all of the other companies were standing-to, Colonel Webber-Smith was calling for his horse and the adjutant, the transport ponies were having their bran and oat nosebags snatched away, the buglers taking up the call whilst damp, smoky cooking fires were stamped to embers.

The drizzle had cleared but the light was still not good as the sentries saw two figures, one tall and lean, one small and fat – and weighed down by the hare that he carried by its hind legs – come galloping towards them. Only the scarlet of their coats saved them from a jumpy volley, both pickets having cocked their rifles and brought them to the aim at the sight of movement where only Russians should be.

‘Don't shoot, it's us, Pegg and Luff! What's going on?’ The two hunters breathed hard as the sentries lowered their rifles.

‘God knows. You must have heard them shots over yonder, more or less where you came from?’ A skinny, sallow-faced lad, the senior of the two sentries, eased the hammer of his rifle forward before absently brushing at his running nose.

‘Aye, that was us, just got this.’ Pegg held up the hare: it was almost as big as he was.

‘Well, no fucker knew you was out there, the whole lot's standing-to. Best report to Jock McGucken, he'll skin you sooner than he does that bleeder. Sure there's no Russians out there?’

‘Not that we saw,’ Pegg shouted over his shoulder as the pair trotted guiltily back towards McGucken and wrath.

And wrath they got. There seemed to be no end to the pair's sins. First they had neglected to ask a corporal if they could go out to look for game. On top of that, they'd been half-witted enough not to check out with the same pair of sentries through whom they would return. What did they expect the company to do when they heard shooting to their front? And what about the rest of the regiment? Hadn't they made Captain Eddington and himself look utter fools in the eyes of everyone? Didn't they realize that the company commander, even now, was having a strip torn off him by no lesser mortal than the colonel?

Then, in the name of all that was holy, what would they have done if they met a clutch of bleedin' Cossacks out there just waiting to stick their lances up their fur-framed hoops? How would he have explained that to their mums and, more to the point, Luff was senior enough not to let silly little knobs like Pegg get them all into trouble. They were just downright fuckin' eejits. He was going to rip them a second arsehole, worse, he had a good mind to fuck-them-off-out of the Grenadiers and back to some ‘hat’ company!

McGucken's riftings were known to be impressive. The two privates stood trembling to attention whilst the storm flickered about them. Minute flecks of foam from the Colour-Sergeant's lips landed on their cheeks but they dared not wipe it away, they just stood there, watching the others – amused yet appalled – go about their business. Then the squall seemed to have abated. McGucken paused, eased his leather cross-belts on his shoulders, pushed his bayonet scabbard back against his thigh and drew breath.

They were half hoping that they'd get away with just a bollocking and that the ordeal was over. But then another thought occurred to big Jock McGucken.

‘What the bloody hell did yous pair of clowns use to kill that hare? It wasn't buck-shot, was it?’

‘Yes, Colour-Sar'nt,’ the miscreants muttered.

‘Right, that's it! I've had a gut-load of you! You're on company commander's report for damaging your weapons. Now shag off back to your place of duty and get that pox-ridden rabbit out of my sight!’

With the old, smooth-bored muskets it was quite normal to use buck-shot for killing game, so all the soldiers had brought some pellets with them for just that purpose. The trouble was, the spiral rifling with which the barrel of the new rifle was etched – the very secret of its range and accuracy – was thought to be delicate. Firing even soft lead pellets from it was ordained a sin – though this, Pegg and Luff claimed, had been made far from clear. The only good that might come from the embarrassment of the Grenadier Company, McGucken reasoned, was that the men wouldn't abuse their rifles again.

Company commander's report, though, was not good. Discipline McGucken-style usually resulted in extra duties or fatigues being awarded, tedious but bearable. Being put in front of Captain Eddington – with all his cold authority – was quite another matter for at the very least their records would be spoilt and the possibility of promotion delayed. They might be stopped pay or their ration of spirits, but much worse, now that they were on active service, a flogging was a possibility. It made sense: the officers would want to underline the fact that discipline had to be sharper in the face of the enemy, that things that might be overlooked in barracks were unacceptable in the field.

‘Ever seen a flogging, Luffy?’ Such punishments were almost unknown in the 95th, so it was a fair bet that Luff had no such experience and that its very mystery made the prospect all the worse.

‘No, mate. One of the new draft from the 82nd got twenty lashes couple o' years back, he said. Got busted from lance-jack an' all. He reckons it don't hurt that bad, it's just that you feel such a twot if you yell out with everyone watching.’

The hare had been stuffed into Pegg's haversack as soon as they got back to where they had left their equipment. Now the pair were desperately trying to light a fire. Despite shaving twigs to get finer tinder, the scraps of branches were so wet that everyone had had the devil's own job to get their cooking fires lit. One or two of the older NCOs had lodged bits of lint in their shirt pockets to keep them as dry as possible for the flints and steel. Once their fires were lit, kindling was brought by others and very quickly the whole company was fanning and puffing smokily. Luff and Pegg's episode, though, had ensured that everyone had to start the laborious process again whilst the pair could be sure that no embers would willingly be passed in their direction. Luff had already spent ten minutes with his coatee undone as a windbreak, desperately trying to get a spark to take.

‘This'll never work, the wood's too bleedin' wet.’ Luff continued to strike his tinder box disconsolately.

‘We'll have to use a cartridge.’ Pegg suggested exactly what was on Luff's mind.

‘So long as we don't get caught, we've got enough drama as it is.’ Luff knew that they would have to account for each round.

‘We won't get caught. We'll be firing them at Russ tomorrow then no bugger will know how many we've got.’ Pegg's logic was impeccable. He reached into his pouch, took out a bundle of ten waxy paper tubes and split one open, sprinkling the gunpowder over the twigs. The pair crouched over the pyre, Luff tinkering away until a spark took, the flash making them both jerk back in surprise. But the billow of white smoke drifted right through the knots of kneeling, blowing men who were trying to get their own fires going.

‘Right, you two, I seen that, you've been told not to use cartridges for fires. You're both on report, get your bodies over to the Colour-Sergeant now!’ Sergeant Ormond had seen exactly what happened – he had little choice: Pegg and Luff had little hope. As they trudged over for their second interview with McGucken in half an hour, they could almost feel the bite of the lash.

‘See, I was right, wasn't I?’ Carmichael had indeed been right, the French were marching next to the sea and the support of the ships whilst the British stumped on further inland.

‘Yes, we've been seen off again by the Frogs,’ Morgan answered distractedly. Ever since he was a boy he'd hated long walks. Mother had supposed them to be ‘improving’ and dragged him about with her as she visited the estate cottages apparently impervious to the incessant Cork rain. After her death when he was six – and thoroughly at home astride a horse – he had rarely walked any distance at all, until he'd joined the regiment. Then he'd really learnt to hate walking.

Now the long columns crept forward over gentle, rolling hills that were covered in rough, herby grass whilst larks rose and fussed overhead. Here and there they came across odd, isolated villages of shingled cottages with some larger stone houses dotted about, herds of skinny cows and flocks of hairy goats, but it hardly relieved his boredom.

There were great, leafy vineyards everywhere, heavy with fruit. Carefully cultivated over many acres, the ground was criss-crossed with shallow trenches designed to allow the vines to grow up the wall facing the sun. These were topped with sticks and light poles along which the sinewy vines grew, and on them were bunches of green grapes ripening in the autumn sun. But other than the vines and the odd bit of rough plough, the country was remarkably untouched.

‘Wouldn't you just love to be in the cavalry, now?’ Carmichael had come beetling up from his place at the rear of the company column to pester Morgan.

‘Well, I'd love to have a better horse than Shanks's mare, if that's what you mean, Carmichael, but this fight will be decided by us and the guns, I reckon, not that lot.’ Morgan nodded past the Light Division that marched to their own – the 2nd Division's – left towards the dust cloud that marked the progress of the Cavalry Division. They had been pushed out inland to guard the Allies' flank. ‘Anyway, if I did have a horse I would miss all this grand marching, wouldn't I, and all the fun of dealing with the men and their precious, bloody feet.’ Morgan knew that at the end of the day's march, when weapons had been cleaned but before food could be prepared, there would be the ritual of foot inspection. All those who were not on sentry would sit by their kit, boots and socks off whilst the subalterns peered at spongy soles, poked at burst blisters whilst the sergeants scribbled in notebooks beside them.

‘Do I detect a slight malaise in the house of Morgan? Is the bold officer bored of la vie militaire before it's even started?’ Carmichael could be especially annoying when he put his mind to it, thought Morgan. If he kept his mouth shut perhaps the wretched man would leave him alone.

As roads and tracks were crossed by the horde so gawping villagers gathered, apparently totally unafraid of the invaders. The local people were Tartars, broad-eyed, coarse-haired, accustomed to the hard life of field and plough but occasionally they would glimpse some of the managing classes who dressed and looked more like Europeans. Straddling the same squat ponies as the peasants, everyone expected these folk to hare off at the sight of the Allies. But no, they seemed as content as their workers to watch the columns stamp by, even exchanging some civil words in French with the Staff officers.

For three days this continued with, as each dawn broke, everyone expecting a brush with the foe. But of him there was hardly a sign. Stuck in the middle of the dusty phalanx, the 95th saw nothing of the occasional hussar or light dragoon who came flying into headquarters to report the sighting of a distant cavalry vedette. They just plodded on, any thrill of excitement quelled by the weight on their backs, any spark of anticipation quenched by the pain of their blistered feet. One or two men fell from the ranks clutching at their stomachs, cholera never being far away, but for the most part the troops just trudged, living for the order to raid the precious water from their big, wooden canteens.

There wasn't much help for the sick. If a man fell out with disease or heat-stroke, his comrades would do all that they could before leaving him to be picked up by the regimental surgeon and his Staff. In battle, the band were expected to provide stretcher-bearers, but on the line of march they had music to play so the task of collecting the sick fell to the handful of wives. Only eight of them had been selected by ballot to accompany the regiment and now two were themselves sick. The others, though, had been equipped with locally purchased carts drawn by sturdy little ponies. Just big enough for two casualties and all their weapons and kit, the little traps did a brisk trade amongst the plodding companies.

There had been some heart-wrenching scenes back in England when the wives whose names had not come up in the ballot parted from their husbands but, just as Morgan had predicted to himself, Mary had been one of the lucky ones. Now he glimpsed her only rarely, his throat constricting with desire whenever he saw her dashing about in her cart.

A boy from Thirsk called Almond, never the strongest, had been one of the few sick in the Grenadier Company. On the second day, he'd simply plonked himself down in the grass, grey in the face and all resistance gone, just letting his rifle fall like so much scrap. He'd sat for a few moments whilst his comrades got a bit of water past his lips, but as soon as the NCOs decided that he had to be left for ‘the quack’ he'd just lain down flat, moaning pathetically. Quick on the scene was Mary. Where Almond was grey she was vibrant, where he was weak she was strong. Morgan could see that this life suited her perfectly. Gone was the chambermaid – in her place was a confident, blossoming young woman totally in control, all faux-servility forgotten.

It was the first decent river they'd seen. By the time they got to it the Bulganak was terribly muddied after cavalry, guns and the leading divisions had splashed through. This didn't prevent some of the younger soldiers from trying to fill their canteens with the gritty liquid, NCOs roundly cursing them for greenhorns. But whilst the early autumn sun shone with a ferocity that no one had warned them about in England and burnt necks were sponged in the dark but cooling water, bugles suddenly shrieked from way to the front.

‘Colour-Sar'nt, unless I'm very wrong, the cavalry have got a bite. Get the men out of the river and listen out for our bugles.’ Captain Eddington was right. The cavalry screen had seen Russian horsemen in far greater numbers than ever before lining the ridge to their front and now horse artillery was being called forward to support them. As the 95th cleared the river and fell into disciplined rank, trotting up to where the rest of the 2nd Division was forming, so the horse gunners came pelting into the ford.

From the slightly rising ground, Eddington's company was to get a grandstand view of the little drama that was to be played out in front of them. The men first formed in their three ranks, then they were allowed to stand at ease, then when it became clear that the fighting would all be done by horse and guns, they were allowed to sit down and smoke. In minutes the martial atmosphere had changed to that of a race meeting.

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