On the ground next to Andrew was his sketchbook, fallen from his pocket. William pulled it out, his fingers numb and shivering, with his hand seeming to move of its own accord and his eyes merely observing this, as if these digits that held the book belonged to another body and not his own. He flipped through the pages to the last one, the final thing that Andrew had drawn … and it was them, all four of them together, full of life, joyful and smiling, as brothers.
And then, as the tears came flooding from his eyes, and sadness tore its rampaging passage through his innards, William remembered the scene of Michael charging with wild desperation towards Paul, who had been surrounded by Russian troopers, and afterwards returning alone, lying face-down on his mount, with two broken lances embedded in his back.
That image, combined with the scene of unspeakable tragedy before him, was the end; William was done and finished. Somehow, through the immensity of the despair, he became aware of the sound of many hooves thundering his way. Looking up, he saw a fist of Russian horsemen charging out of a tear of smoke, heading straight for him with their sabres bright against the drab hues of this field of death.
William struggled to his feet and stood on shaky, bleeding legs before the Russians as they bore down on him. He did not draw Captain Liversage’s sabre from its scabbard or reach for Andrew’s lance, lying at his feet. Instead, he simply reached inside his jacket with trembling fingers and pulled out the portrait of Aurora. Blood had smeared red smudges over her face, that face that coloured his dreams in a spectrum of pure light and joy every night, that face that danced through his imagination with wistful longing every waking hour … but despite the crimson stains on the portrait the beauty remained, and those painted eyes stared into his with almost as much intensity as they had when he was but inches from the real thing.
‘I’m sorry my love,’ he whispered to the portrait. ‘I’ve failed you an’ I’ve failed my brothers. All has ended in despair an’ tragedy. We were no’ meant tae be together in this lifetime, an’ I can see tha’ now. I love you with all my heart an’ soul, an’ I hope that God can see fit tae bring us together in whatever life comes after this one. Goodbye my sweet angel. Goodbye … forever.’
William tucked the locket back inside his jacket, where it could rest in the quiet, warm dark against his heart, and he then spread his arms out wide to the sides, inviting the sabres and lances to finish him off as he closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky one last time.
The earth-drumming fury of the charging cavalrymen overwhelmed everything else in its ferocity, and the ground rumbled beneath William’s blood-filled boots as the pack sped toward him. The officer leading the charge was the albino Russian, his face a contorted mask of vicious delight. With a fiendish smile slashed across his angular face, he bore down on William with his sabre raised high above his head, lusting with a ravenous hunger to strike the killing blow that had been denied him earlier.
William realised, with a spurt of tragedy pulsing through his veins, that he hadn’t pictured it ending like this; impaled on the end of a Russian lance or decapitated by one of their sabres. Mutilated and desecrated, his mortal remains coming to a final rest in a pile of muck on a foreign field many thousands of miles away from those green, green Highland hills. He had hoped – dreamed – that he’d grow old and grey in the company of his friends and his lover, living out their days in simple bliss beneath the yawning sky and wind-whispering trees. None of that was ever to be now. His friends were all dead, as he would soon be. What else was there to do but to wait for that ice-forged scythe to draw its cold edge along his throat?
William breathed in deeply as tears streamed down his cheeks, inhaling what he imagined would be his last taste of this world’s air. At that very moment, however, a lance, flung with a furious force, whizzed over his head … from behind him.
The deadly projectile arced through the air and found its mark: it transfixed the albino officer through his bone-white throat and sent him tumbling backwards off his horse. From behind William horses and men coursed in a crashing tide as the British Heavy Cavalry smashed into the pursuing Russians, scattering them in disarray. William sank to his knees amidst the chaos of it all, and a darkness rushed into his mind with a hurricane roar in his ears and a dizzying vertigo in the centre of his skull. He was dimly aware of a voice somewhere to his left, speaking English flavoured liberally with a Manchester accent, and gentle but strong hands lifting him into a saddle. After that, a soothing, warm feeling of comfort settled upon him, and consciousness was swallowed by a closing cloak of shadows, like a pebble sinking into the depths of a dark, still pool.
48
WILLIAM
25th October 1854. British Army Camp, a few miles from Balaclava Valley
‘Private Gisborne, wake up! On your feet man, on your feet!’
The voice was garbled and barely coherent, the sound waves muddied like oil paint diluted into an unusable mess by too much turpentine. Who was this? Where was he?
Confusion.
Fear.
PAIN.
PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN.
‘Come
