A Distant Hero (Knightshill Saga Book 2) by Elizabeth Darrell

Author:Elizabeth Darrell [Darrell, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2015-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

9

VERE RODE INTO Ladysmith with the bulk of the relief column at the beginning of March 1900 and was deeply moved by evidence of the privations of a long siege. Constant shelling had reduced much of the town to ruins; the roads were broken by deep craters. The people who lined the streets as the troops rode in were not wildly rejoicing at the prospect of freedom. It had been too long in coming and too dearly bought. In the main they were pale, emaciated and withdrawn. Vere had seen the destitute in London but they had not touched him as deeply as these women and children now did.

The first three months of the twentieth century had been the longest he had ever known. During them his two selves had often conflicted, although there had been no repetition of his folly at Colenso. The martial instinct had enabled him to understand those around him and to sympathize with their anguish, frustrations and uncertainties during demoralizing days and nights so near and yet so far from Ladysmith. The soldier in him had shared those long, wearying marches across inhospitable terrain when muscles ached, throats grew parched and eyes burned from the glare of the sun; had shared freezing nights in bivouac beneath glittering stars knowing the hills ahead concealed an enemy who would bring about yet another setback. His warrior blood had raced through his veins when bugles sounded the advance; he had felt as one with exhausted, filthy, victorious men who finally gained command of a kopje at the end of a day. Over the tragedy of Spion Kop, bought with thousands of lives then surrendered again through mistaken orders, this artist had grieved as bitterly as anyone. The spirit of General Sir Gilliard Ashleigh’s heir had fought as hard as the next man to reach Ladysmith.

The artist in Vere had recorded those three months with insight and sensitivity. Not for him the usual patriotic representation of well-built, immaculate heroes winning the day on battlefields arranged to suit the balance of the subject matter. He showed the life of the soldier in stark reality. Vere Ashleigh’s paintings would never be hung on the walls of military messes, or on those of mansions of governors in far-flung outposts of the Empire. Sir Gilliard would never countenance them at Knightshill, but anyone who had ever taken part in the harsh unravelling of war would recognize and be mesmerized by pictures produced by a man with the pain of it in his soul, and honesty in his vision.

An Australian special correspondent had obtained from his newspaper in Sydney a contract for a series of Vere’s sketches featuring Commonwealth regiments within the relief force, and this prompted another from Delhi concerning Indian troops. The men in khaki had come to regard with friendship the civilian who had helped to drag in an ammunition wagon at Colenso, and they frequently sought to obtain one of his sketches to send home. Aside from his commissioned work,

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