Nightrunners of Bengal (33 page)

Rodney sat up with a jerk, his weariness forgotten. A cold hand moved up the back of his neck, and he stammered, “I—I thought you had an infantry regiment of Bengal Europeans, sir, and a regiment of Dragoons, and a company or more of twelve-pounders.”

“I did.” The general never raised his voice, and there was no special intonation in his quiet words. “I had the Fourteenth Bengal Europeans. I was ordered to send them and the twelve-pounders to Jubbulpore as soon as the news of the mutiny reached headquarters. The Dragoons had already set out for China shortly before. This troop of Bombay Lancers which I have arrived a few days ago to replace them—one hundred Hindus instead of two thousand Christians. Pray allow me to continue. I know the enemy have two well-armed and disciplined regiments of infantry from Bhowani—your Thirteenth and the Eighty-eighth—and one of cavalry, the Sixtieth. My information is that they also have
the equivalent of three regiments of Kishanpur infantry, who will have no great fighting value. Until just now I had counted on their being without any artillery, except a few of the Rani’s six-pounders.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I tried; I couldn’t get at them——”

Sir Hector inclined his head with a wintry smile. “Your courage and devotion have been beyond praise. There are the facts. The British women and children of the old garrison are here, nearly two hundred of them. The regiments that were ordered away left their families when they went, and I have not felt that my position here justified me in sparing men to escort them down country. You say the Bengal sepoys are about to mutiny, but I know I am about to be attacked. If I somehow disarm and disband the Bengal regiments and the troop of Bombay Lancers, I will fight at a disadvantage of one to six. We faced them one to sixteen at Plassey, and beat them, but the sepoys of 1857 are not the same men as the ragged half-hearted rabble who followed Suraj-ud-Dowlah in 1757. I will consider now what is best to do, and pray for God’s guidance. Without some more definite proof, I consider it unlikely that He will decide to disarm the sepoys. In an hour from now they must move to their battle positions.”

Rodney stared at his knees. Sweat trickled down his back, and his hands were numb and clammy. His head throbbed and he could think of nothing to say. In an hour the sepoys would be committed to action stations and out of the general’s hand; after that they could never be disarmed. The Almighty would decide. There was one more thing that must be said. Painfully, hesitatingly, he muttered, “Very good, sir. There are dead Indians in the streets—raped, murdered. The B.N.I can see them. If the men who did it have not been punished we will have no moral right to expect anything else ourselves, should the regiments—should we—if——”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Sir Hector said, “I am aware of it. It is a vile, base thing—but I have not been
able to find the perpetrators, and I receive no co-operation from the officers or noncommissioned officers of the Fusiliers and the Artillery in the matter. I try to guide my actions by our Saviour’s words, Captain, but I confess that for the first time in my life I am torn by doubt. These are Englishmen, and they have heard what happened in Bhowani. Their passions are too inflamed now; it is impossible to guide them to a true Christian forgiveness. As an officer in general command of troops, in whose hands rest so many innocent lives, I cannot prevent myself thinking how much more effectively the English soldiers will fight if their fury is allowed to run riot, and encouraged. I am still not sure. I must uphold discipline; I must win a battle, depending on these men; I must not torture the Bengal regiments in their hour of agony.”

Rodney looked up as the little general paused. Nothing showed in Sir Hector’s face. This was a harder man than Dellamain, though formed, like him, of many men. What conflicts raged at night behind that high forehead, between the reassuring thunders of a personal Almighty, the limpid syllables of the Sermon on the Mount, the icy concepts of a new Napoleon?

Sir Hector stepped down from his book, came round the table, and touched Rodney on the shoulder. “There is another thought which will affect my decision, Captain, about the Bengal regiments. I have told no one else. I dare not. A general is a lonely man. We will win this war, sooner or later. By winning we will condemn ourselves and all India to generations of hatred, unless somewhere, somehow, a new affection is born on the battlefields to replace the old. The new will never be quite the same—remember Bhowani, look about in the streets here—but it will be strangled at birth, finally and for ever, unless the Native regiments here remain loyal tomorrow—loyal to themselves, Captain. Without new, powerful evidence against them, I must give them the opportunity.”

There was nothing to say now. Rodney knew he was
facing a great man, and in the general’s place, on the facts before him, would have prayed for the courage and long-seeing wisdom to think as he was thinking. Sentence of death, after so many trials, came in unexpected, beautiful words. “I must give them the opportunity.” Now he had to face the last minutes, prepare himself, and at the last die fighting as a professional fighting man should—hot, but not bitter.

Rodney dragged himself upright, saluted, and walked to the door. There he turned, came back, and picked up the rifle and bayonet. The general looked at him quickly as he went out.

There was a sepoy walking down the passage with a paper in his hand, his heels clicking on the stone flags. Rodney glanced dully at the big 82 on the man’s shako. There was something about the face; it was strained and sick. He walked on; he had seen that expression before. The light from the door behind him bathed the sepoy’s face. He groped in the dregs of his memory and walked slowly.

Naik Parasiya, at the children’s party, the Saturday afternoon in Bhowani—that was the look of animal hurt.

Rodney could not move his feet, and he put his hand against the wall for support. A voice was speaking close to his ear. He did not listen but fought harder to concentrate on a memory. Naik Parasiya’s expression—but he had seen the face itself before. “Go away! There is no sahib here.” His eyes focused, and he saw it was Sir Hector who had followed him and was talking to him, urging him to lie down and rest. “Dismiss, you drunken owls.
Hut!”
He shouted the words aloud, and the general stared. The sepoy had turned into a room off the passage; he had a broad back and long arms.

Rodney grabbed the little general by the elbows, squeezing hard, and shook him. “Did you see that sepoy who’s just passed? He was in the temple at Kishanpur the night of the Holi, with the other ringleaders, getting instructions, making plans. I can see it now, smell it. Oh, God, sir, I
know
they’re going to mutiny!”

Sir Hector stepped away. He rocked once on toe and heel and looked pensively down the passage and up at the ceiling. He said quietly, “Very well. The Almighty’s hand is here. I will require your services as an extra aide on my staff. In one hour’s time in the city square, if you please—you know it? It is at the end of the Street of the Rawans. Mr. Harris will find you a horse. I have certain things to do, if you will excuse me.”

Struggling for breath, Rodney went along to the room where the women were. Everywhere people moved about in the building, preparing for battle. Caroline met him at the door and he pulled her out into the passage. Over her shoulder he saw women tearing sheets into bandages. He heard Mrs. Hatch make a raucous joke and cackle with laughter; the other women looked up at her with slack mouths. Robin was there, asleep. Dusty sunlight poured through the windows, and thunder rumbled in the hills to the south.

He closed the door gently and took Caroline’s left hand and held it to his cheek. He said, “After the battle, dear.”

“After the battle?” She shook her head slowly. “No, now. We’ve travelled a long way together. We’ve lived in misunderstandings, little ones and big ones. We’ve been no better than poor Mr. Dellamain, thinking he was a fox when he was only a rabbit to be killed. Or Colonel Bulstrode, who knew so much he couldn’t believe the truth. It’s not going to happen to me again. I know your wife was killed before your eyes a few weeks ago, and you think you can’t say anything, but—there’s going to be a battle. I love you. I’ve loved you since I first saw you. I must say it now because—I’m still me. Because of the things that have happened to us. I’ve never had much use for womanly modesty, but I did have pride once. Because—there’s going to be a battle.”

“I thought you were so hard and selfish, once,” he said; “then that you were somehow unreal—interested in things and ideals, not people.”

“I was jealous, and furious that I couldn’t keep myself away from you. I don’t want to know anything about the Rani, but I hate her. Major de Forrest couldn’t understand me; I don’t blame him.”

“Then I thought you were a saint.”

“I was terrified of it I could see you kneeling in your mind. Oh, I was so deliriously happy after I got out of that wardrobe. Wasn’t that ridiculous?” She laughed softly. “Because you looked at me as a woman. There was something holding you back before then, something terrible, but—I wanted it.”

“I thought—imagined, dreamed—vile things about you, Caroline.”

She ran one hand through his hair. “I’m a woman. Do you know I tremble for you in the night, and no man’s ever touched me? In the last six months I’ve found out everything about love—except that. I didn’t believe love existed between men and women, only domination and submission; and now I’ve explored every corner of it—except that. I’m not ashamed. Touch me before you go.”

He put his hands on her back and kissed each breast in turn. Her nipples stood up under the stained cotton of her sari, and he brushed the places with his lips. She started and gasped and pressed his head closer. After a minute she bent and whispered in his ear, “Is this it, the mystery?”

He rode back up the Pike towards the river until he came to the Street of the Rawans, and turned right into it. Squads of soldiers filled the narrow shaft, all moving the same way, now swinging rapidly along, now shuffling to a halt as blocks developed ahead. Dust rose, accoutrements clinked. It was again the early hours of May the tenth. If a fire glared over the houses he would go berserk and start fighting his way back to Caroline and Robin. The soldiers did not look round to see who pressed them, and from the saddle he heard them muttering in their languages.

“Wot’s all this, Tom?” “Nap the Noughth’s going to give us one of ’is sermons I expec’. ’E’d better not ask us to be kind an’ ’oly this time.” “Wot are we loaded for, anyway? Bloody dangerous if yer asks me.” “Keep yer trap shut.”

“Where are we going, brother?” “To the market square, I think. The general-sahib will doubtless exhort us before the battle. It is customary.” “It is customary. The general-sahib speaks like a lion. I do not understand what he says.”

He listened carefully to the intonation of the sepoys’ voices. The words were innocent, but he knew what to listen for, and it was there—a subdued tension, an anxiety, a waiting. They didn’t know what the signal would be, but they were ready and they could not hide it.

The street ran from the west into a cobbled square and continued out again on the other side. Another even narrower alley led into the square from the south—the right as he looked. On his left the row of houses was unbroken, and behind them he knew the river must be close. The general, astride his monstrous charger, faced into the square near where this Street of the Rawans entered it. He was talking to two men. One was a black-avised lieutenant colonel of Fusiliers, on foot; that would be R. C. L. Dempsey. The other was a horseman and had a tiger skin under his saddle and wore the brass helmet and black horsehair crest of the Bengal Horse Artillery—Captain Cable. The twilight showed Dempsey’s face hard and Cable’s mouth firm-set. Rodney heard the general say, “Just the one. This is no time for prolonged investigations. To your posts, please, gentlemen.”

The two saluted and went away, and Rodney reported himself for duty. Another rider trotted up and without a word took station a horse’s length behind him. He saw it was a rissaldar in the dark blue and gold of the Bombay Lancers—a slight, grizzled, old man with high cheekbones, grey whiskers, and a tight mouth.

The infantry tramped by into the square and fell in on their markers. The housetops began to lose their hard out
lines, and stars brightened in the first dusk. The half-light washed the housefronts; their boarded windows looked out unseeing over the men. There was no sound but the tramp and click of soldiers, and the noise of the general’s horse blowing breath through its nostrils. Rodney could distinguish the dull scarlet coats of the mass in the square above the white of their trousers; in front, thirty-five feet from the general, was the first rank of Fusiliers; behind it, more Fusiliers; behind them, rank upon rank of Native Infantry; but they were all infantry, and he saw no sign of the rissaldar’s Lancers, or of the British gunners of Cable’s troop. There were noticeably fewer ranks in the Fusiliers than in either of the sepoy regiments behind, and he decided that the Fusiliers must be providing all the outpost detachments watching the river and the approaches to the ford. Bayonets were not fixed; he looked at a dim red sea, white-based, black-capped.

The front rank of the Fusiliers stood motionless in front of him, set back that little distance. They were stunted children of England’s new slums, with bad teeth and sharp suspicious faces. They were muttering to each other, passing some message down the ranks. He looked beyond them at the sepoys—and he was on the Pike at Bhowani in front of Dellamain’s burning courthouse. He caught his breath and swayed in the saddle. Their eyes moved from side to side; they fidgeted in tiny movements; every man searched for a sign or a signal. They held rifles in their hands, their pouches were full of ammunition, and the British soldiers had their backs to them. With a wordless moan he urged his horse forward.

Sir Hector Pierce stood up in his stirrups. “Parade—
’shun!”

Rodney stopped; three thousand men cracked to attention. While the echo still shook the houses, wheels rumbled and hoofs beat in the Street of the Rawans behind. The general edged his horse out of the way and motioned curtly to Rodney to follow suit. One behind the other eight guns
crashed out of the narrow opening, turned right and left, and bounced across the cobbles to fill the space in front of the Fusiliers.