Читать книгу Flashman at the Charge - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 13

Well, if I was in disgrace, I was also in good health, and that’s what matters. I might have been one of the three thousand dead, or of the shattered wounded lying shrieking through the dusk along that awful line of bluffs. There seemed to be no medical provision – among the British, anyway – and scores of our folk just lay writhing where they fell, or died in the arms of mates hauling and carrying them down to the beach hospitals. The Russian wounded lay in piles by the hundred round our bivouacs, crying and moaning all through the night – I can hear their sobbing ‘Pajalsta! pajalsta!’ still. The camp ground was littered with spent shot and rubbish and broken gear among the pools of congealed blood – my stars, wouldn’t I just like to take one of our Ministers, or street-corner orators, or blood-lusting, breakfast-scoffing papas, over such a place as the Alma hills – not to let him see, because he’d just tut-tut and look anguished and have a good pray and not care a damn – but to shoot him in the belly with a soft-nosed bullet and let him die screaming where he belonged. That’s all they deserve.

Not that I cared a fig for dead or wounded that night. I had worries enough on my own account, for in brooding about the injustice of Raglan’s reproaches, I convinced myself that I’d be broke in the end. The loss of that mealy little German pimp swelled out of all proportion in my imagination, with the Queen calling me a murderer and Albert accusing me of high treason, and The Times trumpeting for my impeachment. It was only when I realised that the army might have other things to think about that I cheered up.

I was feeling as lonely as the policeman at Herne Bay¹⁴ when I loafed into Billy Russell’s tent, and found him scribbling away by a storm lantern, with Lew Nolan perched on an ammunition box, holding forth as usual.

‘Two brigades of cavalry!’ Nolan was saying. ‘Two brigades, enough to have pursued and routed the whole pack of ’em! And what do they do? Sit on their backsides, because Lucan’s too damned scared to order a bag of oats without a written order from Raglan. Lord Lucan? Bah! Lord bloody Look-on, more like.’

‘Hm’m,’ says Billy, writing away, and glanced up. ‘Here, Flash – you’ll know. Were the Highlanders first into the redoubt? I say yes, but Lew says not.¹⁵ Stevens ain’t sure, and I can’t find Campbell anywhere. What d’ye say?’