Nightrunners of Bengal (22 page)

Colonel Bulstrode swung the waler on its haunches. He snatched up a cavalry sabre from the crowd, leaned forward, and rode at the sentry. Rodney found his head nodding in
agreement. All this was detailed in orders; everyone knew what to do. George Bulstrode knew, and was doing it.

When an armed native soldier runs amok, he will immedi
ately be shot or cut down, without parley, lest others should
suffer from his madness.

The jemadar and those armed men on guard duty knew the orders too. But the mere presence of lunacy seemed to deprive the sanest Indian of his sense. It was infectious; beneath their stolid surfaces some of the others up there might be as overwrought as the sentry.

Bulstrode hurled the waler up the steps by main force. His bald head shone, and the muscles were knotted in his neck. The madman held his rifle up in both hands and did not try to defend himself. He cried, “Remember Mangal Pande! Remember! Remember!”

Bulstrode whirled back, the sabre-arm rigid. The seams burst at the back of his scarlet coat. The horse stumbled on the top step, and twenty stone smashed down behind the steel. Bulstrode followed the blade through, diving to the stone flags with a crash that shook the building. The sword’s edge struck where the sentry’s neck jutted from his high collar. His cries choked out in a whistling shriek. His head jumped off and up and out and twenty feet over the crowd. A fountain of blood spouted from his neck. The rifle clattered, the knees gave, the trunk folded and rolled over and over down the long steps.

Who was Mangal Pande? Rodney knew he’d heard the name recently—the sepoy of the 34th in Barrackpore who ran amok and murdered an officer, the case that was supposed to be something to do with the greased cartridges. And this poor devil of a sentry, brooding over it, had gone mad too. The guard here was behaving almost as badly as the 34th’s guard that day, and there were two sepoys in the cells for refusing to accept their percussion caps. He looked anxiously about him and wished he could collect a bunch of his own 13th; then he’d be ready for whatever happened.

Bulstrode grabbed a pillar, dragged himself upright, and glared at the jemadar. The murmur in the crowd grew louder, the men swaying this way and that like tall crops in the wind. It was scalding hot, about 130 here in front of the fire. The fire—now suddenly it sprang to life. Flames poured through the gaol roof and roared up into the sky. All together, the convicts shrieked; Rodney remembered the writhing hands. He braced himself, shoved desperately through the crowd, and ran forward.

The heat from the fire beat at him, scorched his face, and charred his whiskers and eyebrows. The air burned in his lungs, and the smart of it wrinkled his eyes. He ran on, knowing that other men had joined him and ran blindly beside him with hands on his shoulders. He knew too that they were green-jacketed sepoys of the 13th who drove with him into the flames. He glanced quickly at them: Ramdass and Harisingh, the inseparables.

He searched along the wall for the keys. Sparks volleyed among the rafters, flame burst in his face, smoke choked him. He found the key ring on a nail near the far end, and knife-hurt hot to the touch. He jabbed key after key into the door of the cell nearest the court while Ramdass and Harisingh fought with the rusty bolts. At last a key fitted; the three leaned coughing against the door. It swung open, and five half-naked men stumbled out. Rodney ran on burning feet to the next cell, found the key quicker this time—four more convicts. Then the next …

Behind them the roof of the court building collapsed and sent a flat sea of flame roaring over them. For a second it bathed them, but they were at the last cell. No key fitted its door, but they beat insanely on the wood with their hands. The faces inside pressed against the grille and yowled. Ramdass put his rifle to the lock and blew it in. A score of tattered scarecrows fell out—murderers and dacoits, still manacled and dragging leg irons.

Out on the cool-seeming Pike, Rodney staggered into a Native Officer of cavalry, and recognized Pir Baksh. He
gasped an order to collect the convicts again and guard them. Pir Baksh saluted and did nothing. Rodney’s head swam. He croaked angrily, repeating the order. No one was listening to him. Jemadar Pir Baksh and all the men around stared down the Pike towards the 88th’s quarter guard.

The beams of court and gaol exploded like volleys of cannon shot. The wind backed sharply and hurled a torrent of sparks and whole burning splinters of wood across the Pike. The bright shower flew over the crowd to settle on the roofs of the quarter guard and of the magazines and storehouses behind it. Not for thirty seconds could Rodney hear, under the other noises, the bang and rattle of rifle fire.

All the 88th were firing—the sepoys in the crowd and the sepoys on the guardroom verandah. Their scarlet coats stood out among the dark green of the 13th and the french grey of the 60th. He saw a naik shoot Colonel Bulstrode in the back. A spatter of shots struck Cornet Jimmy Waugh, and he knelt down and died. A scarlet octopus of arms pulled Max Bell off the verandah. The arms rose and fell, the bayonets flashed. Others fired in the air; all shouted an incoherent, crazy chant.

“Remember Mangal Pande! Mangal Pande! This is the night of the raw flesh…. Kill! The guns are coming. Kill them all! Kill or be hanged! Remember!”

He was right; the 88th had mutinied. He saw that nearly everyone round him wore the 13th’s rifle green. His collar rasped his raw neck, but he shouted with relief. He called out to them by name.

“Manlall, Badri Narain, Thaman, Vishnu. To me! To me! The Eighty-eighth have mutinied. Thirteenth, to me!”

He thanked God they had brought their rifles after all. The fighting passion, like a river of fire, burned out his pain and weariness. His fierce pride of regiment sent him shouting and exalted above them—pride in the memories, pride of the stubborn shared endurance of Chillianwallah, pride of the meteor charges, side by side, into the icy dawns of the Punjab, pride of the men who followed him into the fire.
Together, in equal and matchless loyalty, they had for a hundred years rolled like a flood over all enemies.

“Thirteenth Rifles, to me, to me!”

Their faces turned slowly towards him; they were the faces of strangers, lost and blind-eyed. Their lips moved and their fingers twitched on the triggers.

Beside him Alan Torrance whispered under his breath, “They’ve gone mad. Lord Jesus, they’ve all gone mad.”

The green strangers pressed closer. An inch from his ear, a rifle exploded. The ball smashed into Torrance’s appalled face, blew off his nose, and ploughed up between his eyes, into his forehead, and out at the top of his head. The Byronic boy squirmed gobbling in the dust, and spouted blood and brains. The strangers closed in. Feet stamped, bayonets searched, the sounds faded. Insanely they tried to kill it, but they could not altogether stop its whimpering.

Rodney’s heart turned over and swelled and burst. His pride drained out in a sweeping groan and left him empty. He was sweating cold, and sick. That was Sepoy Shyamsingh there, his face twisted and his eyeballs glistening—Shyamoo the quiet peasant, Shyamoo with the farmer’s dry humour, Shyamoo, who snarled like a dog and thrust his bayonet into Alan’s bowels.

Rodney felt no fear for himself. In that second there was no room for anything but disgrace. He stood among them and sank into a slimy lake of shame. All that he was had failed. The English in India had failed England; the Bengal Army had failed its faith, his regiment its glory; he had failed these men; they, who were a part of him, had failed themselves.

Robin. All the women and children alone in their bungalows. Joanna. He knew what Geoffrey Hatton-Dunn had tried to say. He lifted up his arms and in disgrace and shame and horror cried out in English, his voice breaking, “Stop it! In the name of God, stop it!”

It was useless to cry for mercy or call them by name. They were only more angry that he knew them, more intent
to kill, so that none who had seen this moment should live to tell what he had seen. But he had to live, he had to rescue Robin. Panic choked his throat. The dark faces closed in.

The night split apart and the fire darkened. A violet flash leaped out and up to all horizons and the sky. Solid white-hot air thudded against his eardrums and pressed him without pain into the dust. Long rocket streamers, vivid sparkling scarlet, streaked up into the smoke clouds. A noise began and roared and quaked without cease, and the earth shuddered. Bricks and stones crashed among the crowd. Bulky shapeless things droned overhead and splintered distant trees. The upper half of a sepoy’s scarlet-coated torso squelched by his side and skidded away towards the gaol. The magazine had exploded.

Tom and Prissy Atkinson awoke with a start, together.
Tom’s voice trembled.
“Ayah, kya hogya?”
Big dark
shadows moved about their room, and Mummy had gone
to help the stork who was bringing Auntie Dotty a new
baby. There were bangs and flashes outside, and big ugly
things in the room, smudged and vague through the mos
quito net, and Ayah didn’t answer. Prissy began to whimper:
the bogey man had come to get her, the bogey man with
the purple face and the black hat and the steel claws. She
screamed in a hiccuping crescendo, rhythmic, hysterical.
The mosquito net ripped.

Victoria de Forrest lay awake, naked and uncovered, on
her bed. A drowsy tenderness made her face lovely, and she
touched her skin with the tips of her fingers, and her tongue
moved. Eddie Hedges, asleep and naked, lay with his back
against hers, and his lips, which she could not see, curled
in a thin sneer. She looked at the shape of his head in the
darkness. His clothes were scattered in an untidy heap on the
floor. Her father would never come in, but perhaps Eddie
had better get back
—
there seemed to be a fire somewhere,
and a disturbing, whispering noise. He must marry her, she
loved him so; but he said his debts were so great, and he
was so keen on his work. He’d be famous, and the old sticks
who had such a down on him would be jealous. No one
knew him as well as she did. She’d wait; this was worth all
the world and all the sneers
—
this. She stirred and felt the
warmth of fruition, here, and here, and here. She didn’t care.
He’d have to marry her if it was true, and she knew in her
womb that it was. She’d be the best wife in the world, for
him; and she’d look after him; and he’d settle down and
never want to roam any more…
.
The noise came suddenly
close, right outside, there on the verandah, shots and shouts.
Armed men burst in and fired before she could move hand
or foot. Eddie was sitting up, naked, the sneer hard on his
face. He fell back, and she fell across him. One sepoy turned
them over with his bayonet; another spat on the floor and
said, “Harlot! But he was like a good wild hawk, wasn’t
her

Major Anderson, second-in-command of the 13th Rifles,
was a bachelor and lived alone. When something awakened
him he sat up, pulled the mosquito net aside, and pushed
his head out. He fumbled in the dark for the matches,
snarling, “What the hell’s all this row? Who are you? What’s
the matter?” He struck a match. Eyes glinted in the sudden
light, and he saw ghostly grey and silver uniforms. A trooper
raised his carbine and stepped forward. The breath choked
in his throat. He was alone, and his heart cried out,
Not me, not me. You can’t!
The match burned his fingers. Alone
with a tiny light, alone among crowds, alone in the grave,
alone for ever in the whistling desert of eternity. He loved
no man or woman or child. The match went out, and the
trooper fired.

Moti, the Savages’ ayah, had not slept. The word passed
at dusk, and she lay trembling, her head wrapped in her
sari. She heard Rodney come in and look at her.
This is the night.
She didn’t want to die. The gods had found out
that she mixed the ergot to give Savage-memsahib a mis
carriage last year. They’d told the sahib. It was wicked, and
the gods would kill her now, or the sahib would. The dark
ness quaked, and her teeth rattled. In her village there were
vengeful spirits and ghosts and hobgoblins. The sahib didn’t
kill her that time. He’d come to make sure she was there
to be killed as soon as he was ready. When the fireglow lit
the room she rose silently and scurried out of the house. In
the fields she turned south and stumbled towards the city.
She’d stay with the corn chandler’s wife. If it was all right
tomorrow, she’d come back. She’d tell the memsahib she’d
had an attack of malaria and lost her memory.

Lady Isobel Hatton-Dunn clenched her hands until the
nails cut her palm, and lay still with eyes closed. She
screamed continuously, but not too loudly. She and Pris
cilla Atkinson had come straight from the party to the van
Steengaards’, to await the arrival of Dotty’s baby.
Almighty and most merciful God, give me strength and mercy.
It was
dark, and Priscilla lay in the corner, crumpled, half-naked,
raped, and dead. Assistant-Surgeon Herrold was dead. Their
blood ran sluggishly across the floor and under the bed,
where Dotty hid. She hadn’t had her baby yet; the waters
had broken an hour ago, and travail had begun. If she,
Isobel, could make noise they wouldn’t hear Dotty’s groans.
She kept up her screams, not feeling the man who grasped
her and sweated to his climax.
Scream again, carefully, just right. Let another sepoy replace the first—no, the fourth, that was. Make a noise carefully, just right. Geoffrey must be dead, Willie dead, Priscilla dead, Rodney dead. Scream, but not too frantically, just right, so that they will keep on, and not kill me and drown my cries.
She opened her eyes
suddenly. They were dragging Dotty’s grotesque body out
from under the bed. Lady Isobel cut her scream short and
began to fight in desperate silence. The man rolled off her
and did not fight back. All struggling stopped, and they
watched a baby’s birth. She lay panting and tried to hope.
The sepoys’ faces were tender. They were farmers, and their
faces became shining and alight. One knelt to help the
struggling girl Another sprang with tormented eyes out
of the shadows. He swore, kicked the helper aside, fired
his rifle, and stamped with his booted feet. Isobel watched
the muzzle come round on her, and felt the bayonet point
slide in.