Victors and Lords Read online

  VICTORS & LORDS

  Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press

  BY ALEXANDER KENT

  Midshipman Bolitho

  Stand into Danger

  In Gallant Company

  Sloop of War

  To Glory We Steer

  Command a King’s Ship

  Passage to Mutiny

  With All Despatch

  Form Line of Battle!

  Enemy in Sight!

  The Flag Captain

  Signal—Close Action!

  The Inshore Squadron

  A Tradition of Victory

  Success to the Brave

  Colours Aloft!

  Honour this Day

  The Only Victor

  Beyond the Reef

  The Darkening Sea

  For My Country’s Freedom

  Cross of St George

  Sword of Honour

  Second to None

  Relentless Pursuit

  BY R. F. DELDERFIELD

  Too Few for Drums

  Seven Men of Gascony

  BY DAVID DONACHIE

  The Devil’s Own Luck

  The Dying Trade

  BY C. NORTHCOTE PARKINSON

  The Guernseyman

  Devil to Pay

  BY V. A. STUART

  Victors and Lords

  The Sepoy Mutiny

  BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT

  Frank Mildmay OR

  The Naval Officer

  The King’s Own

  Mr Midshipman Easy

  Newton Forster OR

  The Merchant Service

  Snarleyyow OR

  The Dog Fiend

  The Privateersman

  The Phantom Ship

  BY DUDLEY POPE

  Ramage

  Ramage & The Drumbeat

  Ramage & The Freebooters

  Governor Ramage R.N.

  Ramage’s Prize

  Ramage & The Guillotine

  Ramage’s Diamond

  Ramage’s Mutiny

  Ramage & The Rebels

  The Ramage Touch

  Ramage’s Signal

  Ramage & The Renegades

  BY JAN NEEDLE

  A Fine Boy for Killing

  The Wicked Trade

  BY W. CLARK RUSSELL

  Wreck of the Grosvenor

  Yarn of Old Harbour Town

  BY RAFAEL SABATINI

  Captain Blood

  BY MICHAEL SCOTT

  Tom Cringle’s Log

  BY A. D. HOWDEN SMITH

  Porto Bello Gold

  BY NICHOLAS NICASTRO

  The Eighteenth Captain

  Victors

  &

  Lords

  V. A. STUART

  The Alexander Sheridan Adventures, No. 1

  MCBOOKS PRESS

  ITHACA, NEW YORK

  Published by McBooks Press 2001

  Copyright © 1964 by V.A. Stuart

  First published as Like Victors and Lords in Great Britain

  by Robert Hale Limited, London 1964

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or

  any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or

  mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Requests for such permissions should be addressed to

  McBooks Press, 120 West State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover painting: The Battle of Sebastopol, after 1855 by Jean Charles Langlois

  Courtesy of Musée des Beaux Arts, Caen, France,

  UK/Bridgeman Art Library.

  Frontispiece: from Gardiner’s School Atlas of English History, London, 1891.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stuart, V.A.

  Victors and lords / by V.A. Stuart.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-935526-98-6 (alk. paper)

  1. Great Britain—History, Military—19th century—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837-1901—Fiction. 2. Balaklava (Ukraine), Battle of, 1854—Fiction. 4. Crimean War, 1853-1856—Fiction. I. Title PR6063. A38 V54 2001

  823’.914—dc21

  2001045006

  All McBooks Press publications can be ordered by calling

  toll-free 1-888-BOOKS11 (1-888-266-5711).

  Please call to request a free catalog.

  Visit the McBooks Press website at www.mcbooks.com.

  Printed in the United States of America

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Robert Meikle of Perth whose grandfather

  charged with the Royal North British Dragoons

  (Scots Greys) at Balaclava.

  . . . They rode like victors and lords,

  Thro’ a forest of lances and swords

  In the heart of the Russian hordes,

  They rode or they stood at bay . . .

  “THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE AT BALACLAVA”

  OCTOBER 25TH, 1854

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  With the exception of the hero and heroine and their relatives, all the characters in this novel really existed and their actions are a matter of historical fact. Their opinions, too, are in most cases widely known, and where they have been credited with remarks or conversations (as, for example, with the fictitious characters) which are not actually their own words, great care has been taken to make sure that these are, as far as possible, in keeping with their known sentiments.

  PROLOGUE

  ON A WARM August morning in the year 1846, the Royal Borough of Windsor was gay with flags and bunting. Crowds had been gathering from an early hour, attracted by the prospect of a military review, which was to be held that afternoon in the Great Park, in honor of His Royal Highness Prince Albert’s twenty-seventh birthday.

  Aware that the queen herself was to be present with her royal consort, people began to assemble outside the castle and along the processional route, so that very soon every vantage point was occupied and the pavements lined, six-deep, with spectators. Many made their way to the gates of the cavalry barracks where, in addition to the squadron of Household Cavalry which would furnish the Sovereign’s Escort, it was rumored that the Earl of Cardigan’s famous “Cherry Pickers”—the 11th Hussars—had spent the night.

  The regiment had recently returned from Dublin. Renowned both for the magnificence of its uniforms and the precision of its drill, the 11th was a great crowd-puller on such occasions, and had been missed during its three-year tour of duty in Ireland. Although Prince Albert had ceased to be colonel-in-chief on his appointment to the Grenadier Guards four years before, the Cherry Pickers were still known as Prince Albert’s Own and would have a special part to play in the afternoon’s spectacle. The majority of those milling about the barrack gates had gone there hoping merely for a glimpse of the Hussars in their fabulous cherry-coloured pantaloons but a few, rowdies and trouble-makers for the most part, had other intentions.

  They stood in a small, muttering group, apart from the rest, grimly awaiting the expected appearance of the regiment’s commanding officer, so that they might boo and shout insults at him, for the Earl of Cardigan was universally disliked and a recent scandal had once more aroused public opinion strongly against him.

  By noon, when the regiments of Foot were starting to converge on the park from bivouac and barrack, the pavements were so densely
packed by cheering spectators that the troops lining the processional route and the blue-uniformed constables of Sir Robert Peel’s police force found difficulty in holding them back. But there were few incidents, even among those outside the cavalry barracks, where trouble had been anticipated and extra police were on duty. True, there were shouts and catcalls, when a closed carriage drove up and someone hurled a stone at its rear window but, when it disappeared across the parade ground, even the rowdies fell silent. The crowds on the whole were happy and good humored, eager to demonstrate their loyalty to their young queen and anxious, too, as a wave of patriotic fervor swept them, to prove to the not always popular Prince Albert that on this, the occasion of his birthday, they bore him no ill-will.

  The streets echoed to the stirring strains of martial music and to the rhythmic tramp of marching men. As they watched the splendid spectacle of England’s military might flowing towards them, rank upon rank, scarlet and gold, tartan and tossing plumes, in a perfectly ordered river of brilliant colour, the citizens of Windsor cheered lustily. Voices rose above the shrilling of the fifes and the beat of drums, above the music of the ever-changing marches played by the military bands—eager, excited voices, calling for the royal personage in whose honour all this pageantry had been set in motion.

  “Long live Prince Albert!”

  “God bless his Royal Highness!”

  “Let’s give him three cheers . . . come on, lads, make it a good’un. Three cheers for the Prince . . . hip, hip, hurrah!”

  The cheers rang out. No one, it seemed, could hold for long aloof from the crowd’s pride and pleasure or remain unaffected by their mounting enthusiasm. Yet, in one of the windows of a graceful Georgian house overlooking the processional route, a young girl stood, face pressed against the glass and eyes tightly closed as she wept with anguished abandon.

  She was a pretty, auburn-haired girl of about seventeen, dressed in the height of fashion in a green brocade gown, whose elegant cut emphasized the slim loveliness of her still childish figure and stamped her, for all her youth, as a lady of quality. Few of the passers-by on the pavement below, had they chanced to look upwards at the window in which she stood, would have failed to recognize her as the Lady Charlotte Mowbray, eldest and most beautiful of the four daughters of a distinguished soldier of the Peninsular War—General the Earl of Dunloy, until recently Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

  Some of them, indeed, who had witnessed the arrival fifteen minutes earlier of a tall young man in the frock coat and top hat of a civilian, might even have guessed the reason for her tears, for Lady Charlotte Mowbray’s engagement to Lieutenant Alexander Sheridan, of the 11th Hussars, had been announced a few months previously in The Times. And a great many people in Windsor that day had heard of Lieutenant Sheridan in connection with the latest Cardigan scandal. . . .

  Lady Charlotte herself was, however, unconscious of the crowds below her. In spite of the noise and the commotion, she was conscious of little save the silent, brooding presence of the man who waited in the room behind her, for whom now—although they had once been so close—she could find no words. She wished wretchedly that he had not come, wished that she had not allowed her stepsister Emma, a mere child of fourteen, to persuade her, against her better judgement, that it was her duty to receive him.

  Emmy with her precocity, her absurd passion for justice, her ludicrous and entirely unreciprocated devotion to her elder sister’s fiancé . . . Charlotte bit her lower lip, feeling it quiver rebelliously. She did not need Emmy to tell her where her duty lay or what she must do. It was evident that she could not marry Alex Sheridan in his present circumstances. But she was willing to wait until he should have demanded a fresh hearing of his case and had had his commission restored to him—as it must be, if the truth were told.

  “Alex,” she whispered brokenly, “Alex, please . . . we cannot part like this. We must not!”

  Only by the slight contraction of a muscle at the angle of his grimly set jaw did Alex Sheridan betray the fact that he had heard her. He made no response to her plea and Charlotte’s throat ached with tears.

  A company of Foot Guards, brave in their immaculate scarlet, the black bearskins meticulously aligned, passed under the window at that moment, to be greeted with loud applause from the watching throng. Charlotte saw them as a confused blur of colour through her tears and watched them go without interest, not troubling to raise her head. Even when the Guards were followed by a detachment of kilted Highlanders, swinging smartly along behind their magnificently uniformed pipe band, the weeping girl scarcely noticed them and the crowd’s noisy expression of approval left her unmoved.

  Only when the sound of pipes faded into the distance, yielding to the measured clip-clop of trotting horses, did she rouse herself sufficiently to pass a hand across her tear-filled eyes. A little half-stifled cry escaped her as she saw and instantly recognized the officer who now came into view, clad in a glittering blue and red Hussar uniform and riding a fine blood chestnut, draped with a crested shabraque.

  Even if she had not seen him many times before in Phoenix Park, Dublin similarly attired and mounted, she would have experienced no difficulty in guessing the identity of that arrogant rider, Charlotte thought wryly, for his appearance fitted his reputation. In any dress, James Thomas Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, cut an impressive and elegant figure, but in uniform and on horseback, he was possessed of an eye-catching magnificence few could equal. A man of over fifty now, the years had robbed him of few of his youthful good looks and he sat his horse with the easy, natural grace of an accomplished horseman. He rode confidently at the head of his regiment, a smile curving his lips beneath the flowing, carefully trimmed moustache which, like the luxuriant, ginger whiskers, was as yet untouched with grey. The thick rows of gold lace which adorned his brief jacket gleamed in the sunlight and the richly braided, fur-trimmed pelisse, slung by its cords from one shoulder, moved gently as he rose in the saddle, head held high when the crowd—recognizing him, as Charlotte had done—shouted his name.

  The shouts were critical and uncomplimentary, even abusive. What cheers there were—and they were few—were reserved for the squadron trotting at his back, a solid phalanx of blue and cherry red and gold, set off by the shining coats of the wellgroomed, perfectly matched chestnuts on which the men were mounted.

  Lord Cardigan gave no sign that he’d heard the shouts or was aware of the offensive nature of the crowd’s comments. But his smile faded when one of the spectators, bolder than all the rest, evading the attempt of a constable to restrain him, planted his thin, ill-clad body in the path of the earl’s startled charger and, grabbing the reins, hurled a spate of words into his face.

  From the window, fifteen feet above, it was impossible for Charlotte to hear what the shabbily dressed stranger had said, but the people flocking the pavement heard his cry and, with one accord, they took it up, chanting it in derisive unison, their mood swiftly changing and their earlier good humor forgotten.

  “Lieutenant Sheridan!” they shouted. “Where is Lieutenant Sheridan today, your lordship? Why is he not on parade?”

  In a brief struggle with two husky constables, the man who had stepped from the pavement was overpowered. But, although the Peelers bore him off, the shouting continued unabated.

  “Lieutenant Sheridan fired a shot . . . and now he’s copped the perishing lot!” It was a couplet which had been going the rounds and Charlotte said, the colour draining from her cheeks, “Do you hear them, Alex? They are singing that rhyme about you.”

  The man in the shadows behind her broke his self-imposed silence at last. His voice was weary as he answered. “Yes, I hear them. But it will do no good, you know—my case is closed. It is best forgotten.”

  “Is it?” Charlotte challenged reproachfully. “Oh, Alex, why do you say that?”

  “Because it has all happened before,” Alex Sheridan returned, with flat finality. “That is why, Charlotte.”

  He came to stand beside
her, a tall, slim scarcely recognizable stranger in the unaccustomed grey frock coat of a civilian, his face pale and taut with strain. For an instant, his gaze went to the street below and his blue eyes, bright with an emotion Charlotte could not analyze, followed the retreating backs of the trotting Hussars. There was pride and an odd wistfulness in his voice as he added softly,“They look well, do they not? And I see that Phillip is riding that new mare of his—the one he bought in Moy.”

  “Is he? I had not observed it.” Charlotte dismissed the subject of her brother indifferently but, with unexpected obstinacy, Alex returned to it. “Phillip is a fine fellow, with all the makings of a first-rate officer. And he is popular. He gets on with everyone—even Cardigan likes him. You should be proud of him, Charlotte.”

  “I am proud of him. But . . .” Charlotte’s lower lip quivered and she felt the tears starting again to her eyes as she looked into the face of the man beside her. It was a handsome, boyish face but already bitterness and disillusionment had marred its good looks and the lines etched about mouth and eyes were not those normally to be seen in the countenance of a man of scarcely five and twenty.

  Lord Cardigan seemingly did not age, but Alex Sheridan had added ten years to his appearance during the past few months. She bit her lip and, greatly daring, put out a hand to touch his arm. “It is you I am thinking of now. . . I can think of no one else. If only you would fight back, Alex—if only you would appeal against Lord Fitzroy Somerset’s decision! You heard the crowd just now. Public sympathy is on your side and they sing that couplet everywhere. If you were to lodge an appeal, is it not possible that you might be reinstated, in another regiment, as Captain Reynolds was? After all, Lord Cardigan is constantly attacked in the newspapers, people know him for what he is and he’s detested—the more so since his separation from his wife. And—”

  “No.” Alex cut her short, his tone curt, brooking no argument and discouraging pity. “It is quite useless for me to appeal. I told you . . . my case is closed. It cannot now be reopened.”