Bronwyn Scott - One Night With The Major

‘And at Balaclava?’ the Duke asked at last, too sharp to overlook the one omission in the tales Cam had so carefully chosen. Some of the elation the stories had created ebbed from the room. ‘All that brilliance, all that courage, could not save him?’

Cam shook his head ruefully. ‘It was a series of missteps from the beginning. Raglan should have been using the cavalry to cut off the Russians at the Causeway, but he refused to take action.’ Fortis had been furious at the Lieutenant General’s refusal to put the Light Brigade into play. ‘Major General Cardigan was angry by the time he saw the Russians going after our cannon. He might have stood around all day while others saw action, but he would be damned if he would hold back his troops while the Russians stole our guns off the ridge.’ There had been other mistakes, too. Like sending the note for permission to strike with a messenger who believed too heartily in what a mounted cavalry could do and there’d been a mistake in the route Cardigan used. They should not have cut through the valley. That route had drawn the fire of the entire Russian army. ‘Fortis was ready for the charge. He was magnificent on that stallion of his, his sabre overhead as he called his troops to him. We were the right flank, the second line.’ Cam let the euphoria of battle fill him as he told the tale, how they’d driven through the Russian artillery, how they’d persisted, meeting the Russian cavalry in combat, pushing them back. There had been heady moments, glorious moments! He would not forget how gallant, how fearless his friend had looked. But they hadn’t the strength or numbers to hold the position. They’d been forced to withdraw.

Some of the euphoria let him. ‘We took the worst of it in retreat, in my opinion. We couldn’t withdraw to safety. That’s when Fortis fell.’ When had Fortis realised they’d crossed the valley of death? That the mission was impossible? That they might have achieved smashing through the lines, but that victory was their very downfall. They were exposed with no hope of shelter.

‘The papers said only one hundred and ninety-three returned,’ Cowden said quietly, reverently. ‘That fifty-five of the Fourth’s regiment were killed and four officers.’ But not Lieutenant Colonel Lord George Paget, or Major Camden Lithgow. Guilt swamped him for having survived.

‘Yes,’ Cam replied sombrely. Six-hundred-and-seventy-three men had charged the valley. He’d been one of the one hundred and ninety-three. He still grappled with that reality. How was it that he’d emerged unscathed while those around him fell—officers, good men who knew how to handle themselves in battle—cut down while he had not a scratch? No one could explain it, not the generals who had sent him home, not the priests who’d prayed with him over the dead and now he had to explain to the Duke of Cowden. Why had he lived when Fortis had fallen?

The Duke shook his head and put a fatherly hand on his leg. ‘No, don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself for being spared. At least one of you lived to come home and tell the tales. Fortis was a soldier. He knew the risks. He embraced them.’

Cowden drew a breath to ask the only question that remained. ‘Did you see the body?’

‘I saw him fall. He was only a few yards away from me. Khan, his big black, went down. The Russians shot his horse out from under him.’ Perhaps a horse had made a difference. Perhaps that was why he’d survived. Cam and his strong grey stallion, Hengroen, had both remained miraculously intact. ‘I pushed towards Fortis the moment I saw.’ Cam remembered turning Hengroen towards the fallen Khan, but he couldn’t get close; it was an impossible horizontal movement in a vertical charge. All around him, men and horses were falling, blocking his way. He could do nothing but push forward.

‘And afterwards? Did you see his body then?’ Cowden pressed. It was the question Cam didn’t want to answer, a question that raised all his old hopes and fears when it came to Fortis—that somehow Fortis had survived, that he wasn’t dead.

‘No, Your Grace, I did not. I had orders to carry out and there was...difficulty, shall we say? Afterwards. The British army does not accept defeat without placing blame.’

A little light of misguided hope flared in Cowden’s eyes. Cam had been prepared for this even before Cowden uttered the words, ‘Do you think there’s a chance...?’ He let the words drift off.

‘No, Your Grace, I do not. Four hundred men and horses were slaughtered. I saw him go down in impossible circumstances.’ Cam looked down at his hands and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. ‘I know what you’re thinking. That Fortis was strong enough, canny enough to survive. I thought it, too. For months I hoped. When things settled, I scoured the countryside every chance I got. It was winter, it was cold. I asked at huts and in little villages if anyone had nursed a wounded man.’ He paused, remembering the desperate months of searching, of hoping and all the emotions that went with alternately experiencing intense hope followed by the intense grief of disappointment. There’d be a possible story in a village that only turned out to be someone else. Towards the end, he’d been drunk quite a bit of the time and bitter. It was not the proudest chapter in his life. He still cringed to think about it, embarrassed by his grief and his inability to manage it. The army had been embarrassed, too. He knew why he’d been sent home. In their opinion, he’d become a danger to himself and perhaps to others. He did not want to fuel such a disastrous hope for the Duke.

‘It’s been seven months, Your Grace. If I thought there was any hope left I would not have come home.’ He would have found a way even if it meant desertion. The army had wanted him to go home sooner, but he’d refused, citing the difficulties of winter travels. He’d bought himself a little more time until finally the Major General had insisted he go home and recover before he shot someone by accident or himself on purpose. The latter was more likely. He’d got the gun as far as his head on two occasions.

Cowden smiled. ‘Of course. Forgive me, I am a foolish old man.’

‘And I was a foolish young one—there is nothing to forgive.’ Cam returned the smile. ‘We both loved him and we will miss him. Always.’ He was just starting to accept that part, that his life would go on and Fortis would be with him in his heart. Maybe some day there would be peace along with that knowledge. But it would not be today.

Cowden drew a deep breath, steadying himself. ‘Are you ready? Let’s go tell the others.’ He clapped a hand on Cam’s shoulder. ‘You’ve been very brave in coming here. I know it was not easy. You have your own grief to deal with. You and Fortis were close, like brothers.’ Cam thought he detected a warning in that statement, that the Duke sensed he wasn’t dealing or hadn’t dealt sufficiently with his own grief. The Duke would be right.

Cowden peered at him with kind eyes. ‘You’re a soldier just like Fortis. I can see you want to be with your men far more than you want to be here in London. But don’t underestimate the power of being home, Cam. Whatever you may think of him, your grandfather will be pleased to see you.’

It was technically true. His grandfather would be glad to see him, but not in the way Cowden meant. Not in the way of an elder family patriarch affectionately welcoming home the returning, youthful branch of his family tree. His grandfather would be glad to see him because of what Cam could do for the family. That was as far as his grandfather’s affections went, for any of them. The old man simply wasn’t capable of love.

The old man was, however, capable of a great deal of other things. Cam made his bow at four in the afternoon to his grandfather in the Earl of Aylsbury’s elegant pale blue Louis XV drawing room with its elaborate cornice work and gold leafing. By eight o’clock that evening, a family dinner, ostensibly in his honour, had been instigated with the best china laid out—his grandmother’s favourite Colandine pattern by Primavesi and Son in Cardiff blue, along with the very best wines—his grandfather’s favourite, the Chateau Margaux Bordeaux—and the best guests which included, not surprisingly, the Beauforts and their daughter, Caroline. By the end of the evening, Cam had an appointment to take Caroline out driving the next day and to escort her to a musicale the next. Everything was playing out just as he’d imagined it would. There were no surprises here. Just expectations. And he was meeting them all.