Nightrunners of Bengal (21 page)

Suddenly a sick emptiness of love ached in the pit of his stomach—for his son, who was two and had a halo round his ash curls; to keep the lights for ever in his hair and in his eyes, to have him live for ever, and for ever be a little boy riding his father’s horse in the crook of his father’s arm.

The sheet burned and he could not sleep. He lay still while his thoughts wandered. In the evening he had mentioned that Caroline Langford was leaving Bhowani. Joanna had said, “Of course. She’s seen she can’t get de Forrest, and she can’t get you.” When he asked her what she meant, she said, “Didn’t you see her face when she was looking at you and Robin? She’s a wicked, jealous woman.”

He tried again to recall the girl’s expression; it had been
strange, and frighteningly hurt—but not jealous, for God’s sake. He wondered suddenly about Caroline’s body, her thighs. Breathless, he turned over and held the sheet in both hands. Christ, Christ, the sword was in his loins; was this to be his punishment?

He looked out of the window. The garden sprawled in the heat of the moon. Below Joanna’s breathing he could distinguish no other separate noise, and yet the night shuddered and a pulse of sound made the leaves tremble. He closed his eyes.

Joanna. She was not perfect, but nor was he. He believed there was an Eternal Witness, and tried to live as a man should. She called him unstable and hairbrained, and cried that he would never amount to anything. He’d never be the sort of husband she had grown to want—nor she the wife.

Robin would have to go home in ’60 or ’61. Joanna’s mother had a room for him in the house outside Balham, but he’d be all right in India for another three years, no more; he looked pale. Joanna could take him up to Simla next hot weather, or there was that new little place he’d heard Max Bell mention—Almora; that would be much cheaper. Then, if he borrowed more, or went on the staff, he could take them both home when he went on furlough in ’60 and leave them there when he came back. Eighteen-sixty. That would make thirteen years in India without a break. His father had done forty-four and died here, burned out. Forty-four years was too long. His father could have taken furlough several times; perhaps forty-four years passed in a flash when you were crusading as he had against the Thugs. Perhaps you thought of nothing but the task in front of you, and it concentrated you and kept a fire burning in you, and you were happy.
Me Lords, Ladies, h’and Gennel
men
—
Colonel William Savage, the Destroyer h’of Thuggee!
H’and ’is son, Captain Rodney Savage, the Meddler of Kish
anpur!
He chuckled to himself.

He wanted to sleep. Long ago the Native Officers and sepoys of his company had arranged an open-air party for
tomorrow, the tenth, and had invited him. Their caste laws forbade him to eat with them—they didn’t even eat with each other for that matter—but he would come later, in time to watch the amateur juggling and listen to the stories. They’d smoke rolled-leaf cigarettes and hookahs, and talk about crops and cattle. All parties in the lines had a pleasant sameness, and he knew already that he would sit sedately on a hard chair at Subadar Narain’s right hand and listen and nod. The sepoys would be full of chupattis and lentils, and content. Rambir, his batman, who had never hurt a fly, would tell again how he strangled the huge Sikh gunner at the battle of Chillianwallah, and everyone would laugh because they liked old jokes the best. Narain would talk about the Afghan War of ’39 when he had been a mere three-striped havildar; about the snow in the northwestern passes in ’42. He would relate what he had said to General Napier, what General Wellesley said to his father, how his grandfather lost an arm at Plassey fighting against the British. Plassey, June 23, 1757, where Clive established the foundations of an empire—and Jonathan Savage with him—almost exactly a hundred years ago.

By heaven it was hot, and no longer still. The night pulsed insistently. A reddish light wavered on the lawn …

… and the wavering of the walls. As to the shock of cold water his mind sprang up and the muscles at the corners of his eyes contracted. He stared intently across the room, then up at the ceiling cloth. On the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor, the unsteady light had a crimson tinge. Waves of red, pale and dark, moved across the bed and the hump of Joanna’s body. The solid substance of the room crawled. For a moment longer he lay tensed, watching the broad bands writhe and coil. The moon had gone; crimson patterns were traced in a black sky.

He jumped out of bed, struggled into boots and trousers, and ran on to the verandah, a white shirt in his hand.

Outside, beyond the bulk of the peepul trees at the edge of the garden, men ran in the dust of the road. The throb
bing separated out and he heard the distinct sounds: bare feet—pad-pad in the dust; boots—a heavier thud-thud-thud; metal—the clink and clash of steel on stone and steel on steel; horses’ hoofs—running. They knew where they were going, running steadily through the murk, and made no other sound. No one shouted or coughed or called. The smell of burning tingled sudden and acrid in his nostrils.

Above intervening bungalows and trees the roof of the 88th’s mess stood up in square silhouette against the shaking sky. Something beyond was on fire, in the direction of the courthouse and gaol.

The tautness in him relaxed. Everyone knew what to do about a fire, and he wondered how he had not heard the bugles and trumpets blowing the fire alarm. The 88th’s quarter guard stood across the Pike opposite the court building. He must go; better go on foot; a horse would only be a nuisance at a fire. He ran back into the bedroom and shook Joanna. The watch on the bedside table showed half-past three—in the morning of Sunday, May 10, 1857. Joanna stirred heavily and sat up, mumbling, “Wha-what is it?”

“There’s a big fire—the court, I think. I’ll have to go.”

“Are we safe here? Why d’you have go?”

“Yes, quite safe, and I’m Garrison Captain this week, you know that.”

She spoke petulantly, still half asleep. “Well, hurry’n come back. Don’t li’ being lef’ ‘lone here at ni’—all these blacks. An’ if Robin wakes, he’ll be fr’n’d.”

He snapped, “Pull the curtains in Robin’s room. Wake Ayah and tell her what’s happening. I must run.”

At the door he glanced back, to see her face a shiny dark pink in the fireglow. He knew she wouldn’t get out of bed. As he went she rubbed her eyes, frowned, and settled back on the pillow with a sigh.

Tongues of flame licked up from behind the mess and into the sky, and the bougainvillaea on his verandah was bathed in thin fire. The crackle and mutter echoed from wall and
tree. He heard men’s voices for the first time, shouting faint and far from every part of the cantonment and the city. To his right the hoofs of galloping horses rang metallic on the Deccan Pike. A scorching wind from the plains rattled the leaves and shook the flowers and blew on the back of his neck. The wind, the men, the horses, rushed in towards the fire.

The runners in the road had raised a dust so dense that he could not see more than five yards. They were mostly troopers of the 60th Light Cavalry, on foot, but some were men of the 88th B.N.I, and a few were of his own regiment. He wondered briefly how they came to be running this way—to the south—for the 13th’s lines were down the Pike and beyond the fire. They all ran with tunics buttoned and shakos straight on their heads. They came out of the haze, the light glistened red-black on the sweat of their faces, and they were gone. They ran with knees lifted high, and they all carried weapons—rifles and bayonets, pistols, sabres, carbines. They did not turn their heads to look at him, but the starting eyeballs swivelled towards him and quickly away again. To right and left the officers’ bungalows lay quiet, each in its small estate of trees and lawns. In some a light burned or a shadow moved across a screen.

The three buildings of the court group formed a hollow square on the other side of the Pike from the 88th’s quarter guard. The court building itself was parallel to the Pike and set well back from it; the other two wings jutted forward at right angles from the ends of the court—the clerks’ offices on the south, the gaol on the north. The offices were on fire from end to end. Flames rippled up the walls and whooshed through the skeletal roof. Ladders of sparks climbed into the sky. The smoke pillared and rolled slowly to the north. The air smelled sweet with the fragrance of wormeaten rafters and musty files. These were the Commissioner’s records burning, the distilled labour of many men over many years, all the words that dead farmers had spoken, all the plans that dead officials had made.

The fire in the court was not so far advanced, but its windows glowed like tigers’ eyes and smoke streamed out under the eaves. The gaol was untouched, and the firelight from the other buildings played over its bleak walls and barred windows; the prisoners must have been taken out already.

Here, west of the fire, Rodney saw the whole scene clearly. It reminded him of a pageant setting, torchlit and complete with excited spectators. For the sepoys were doing nothing to put the fire out, and many were not looking towards it. They surged together in thick eddies on the Pike and gabbled under their breaths. He swore when he noticed that here too they all had arms. No one had brought axe, pick, shovel, or crowbar—the tools they were supposed to carry to a fire. Some fool of a bugler must have blown the Alarm instead of the Fire Alarm; that had happened before, three years ago, and he grinned momentarily at the memory: eight hundred excited sepoys, armed to the teeth, gathered uselessly round a burning hayrick. They never allowed Bugler Birendra Nath to forget it, and still nicknamed him the Alarum-wallah.

The lamps on the verandah of the 88th’s quarter guard were pinpricks of yellow light, diminished by the fire glare. The sepoys of the guard clustered in a loose group, armed and accoutred, and looked down at the crowd. The sentries stood passively at ease on their posts, one at each end, bayonets fixed. The jemadar in command walked back and forth, fingering his sword knot. A few other British Officers had come and were shouting orders, each one trying to get a grip on the part of the crowd nearest him. Nothing happened.

A hoarse bellowing drew Rodney’s attention and he tried to see between and over the shakos. He saw a mottled face and unbuttoned scarlet tunic surging through the haze up the Pike. Below, the waler rolled its eyes, flung back its head, and fought to be free of the bit. The mutter in the crowd died to a shuffling whisper, and the fire crackled louder.

Bulstrode forced the horse on and called out to men of his 88th by name. Again Rodney smiled, for this was a familiar and dearly popular scene with officers and sepoys alike—the Curry Colonel exploding in purple apoplexy.

“Govindu Ram, get those men back behind the Pike and await orders. Rudra, take twenty and fetch buckets. Pyari Lall, form a cordon. Owl’s pizzle! No! Out
there
! Where the devil’s Mr. Dellamain? This is his fire.”

He fixed his bloodshot eyes on Captain Bell. “Bell, order the quarter-guard bugler to sound the Stand Fast. Why hasn’t that pig’s arse of a jemadar had it done already?”

Men coagulated into groups under Native Officers and N.C.O.’s, but at once eddied back into the still-swelling mob. Order appeared in one place and vanished in another. Rodney had never seen sepoys behave so stupidly. They turned their heads this way and that, as if looking for somebody; their faces shone in the irregular glare, and were dark and frightened. They had become strangers, Hottentots, and there was no way of making contact with them. The last shreds of Colonel Bulstrode’s temper broke, He trumpeted like a bull elephant and lashed their shoulders with his riding crop. Rodney pushed savagely at the men nearest him and yelled at them to get back across the Pike. It was useless, and for the first time in his life he struck a sepoy. He hit him in the face with his fist and the man did not notice, any more than the others noticed Bulstrode’s whip.

There was something eerie about them—about the fire too. He looked at the court, by this time ablaze and drumming from end to end, and wondered suddenly if it could be arson. The smoke drifted away and laid a black canopy over cantonments, its under-surface crimson-lined.

He turned as another English voice shouted something from behind him, and saw Geoffrey Hatton-Dunn forcing slowly through the mob on a polo pony. Geoffrey swayed in the saddle as he came, and his hair fell in wet streaks across his forehead. A dirty dark blotch stained his shirt, and his monocle swung free on the end of its ribbon. He
was babbling words, but Rodney could not make any sense of them. The sea of shakos nodded; above it the white shirt—stained at the back too—drew closer to Bulstrode’s scarlet tunic.

Twenty yards away, the left-hand sentry of the quarter guard lifted his rifle. Every man of the crowd, the men with the scared and roving eyes, saw the movement—everyone except Hatton-Dunn and the bellowing colonel.

On the high verandah the sepoys of the guard watched their comrade. He held the rifle in the aim a moment, steadied the sights, and squeezed the trigger. His shoulder jerked back to the kick of discharge. The glare of the fire swallowed the orange flash. The powder smoke puffed back from the muzzle. A new blotch, lower and more central on the shirt, spread out across Geoffrey’s stomach. His long body sagged forward on to the pony’s withers, and his fair hair tangled in its mane. The sentry reloaded with quick calm movements. Rodney watched dully; the new cartridges—very efficient. The sentry aimed, steadied the sights, and squeezed the trigger. Rodney’s legs would not move; no one could move; the men in the line of fire did not move.

Geoffrey fell head first into the crowd. Rodney saw his face as it went down. It tried to speak in death, but could not. The pony danced and screamed, and a hundred hands clawed up. They were dragging Geoffrey down—no, no, they were breaking the body’s fall. He shook his head violently, and his heart pounded. The sepoys’ mouths opened wide and stayed open, showing red inside down their throats. The crowd wail caught up and drowned the separate screams.

A vivid flash on the gaol roof forced his attention to it; that had taken fire at last In the light from the burning offices opposite he saw faces pressed to the bars, and arms writhing through. The convicts had not been released after all. He turned back.