Nightrunners of Bengal (34 page)

Rodney watched the faces of the sepoys behind. In desperation they awaited a signal, but no signal came. They could not see through the tight ranks of Fusiliers, but saw the mounted gunners and heard the rumble of the caissons on the cobbles. Behind them and to their left squads of Fusiliers appeared, blocking the other exits from the square, and stood at ease. To their right the row of houses offered no escape. Before, there had been no gleam of metal—only the scarlet and black and white. Now points of steel glinted in the street openings, and the murky light shone on gun barrels, wheel treads, brass helmets.

Cable sidled his horse alongside the general’s, and a sudden flare lit up the barred tiger skin under his saddle. In the sepoy regiments the shakos stirred and nodded. Rodney caught a glimpse of Colonel Handforth’s incredulous face.

The artillerymen flung their weight on wheel and trail. The trails crashed to the cobbles. Charges in, ramrods stabbed; grapeshot in, the ramrods stabbed. The gun nearest to his right had not been loaded with shot. The ramrods flew through the air, the waiting gunners caught them. They stood round their guns in stiff attitudes. At each gun one man stood by the breech, and held the burning portfire in his hand.

Cable muttered, “Ready, sir.”

The general threw back his head and shouted, “General salute.
Present—ARMS!”

In the two sepoy regiments the rifles jerked up to the Present The British Officers swept their swords up to their mouths, kissed the guard, and swung the point down and out in the salute. The regiments stood rigid and helpless.

For on the order the Fusiliers did not come to the Present. Each man turned on his heel to face the Native Infantry behind, and jerked straight up into the aim. At regular
intervals men moved forward and sideways, opening alleys through the ranks. At the end of the alleys the guns stood; the sepoys stared down the muzzles of loaded rifles, down corridors of men into the black mouths of the cannon; the portfires burned bright in the gloom, the smoke wisps rose from them.

The foremost ranks of sepoys wavered. In the thicker dark Rodney could not see the expression on their faces. The general called out in English, “Colonels Handforth and Moray, kindly order your men to lay down their arms—bayonets too. Tell them that if there is any hesitation both regiments will be blown to pieces. Otherwise they will not be hurt. Be so good as to remove your British Officers to a flank.”

In front of the 82nd, Colonel Handforth raised his head to stare at the general over the intervening Fusiliers. The cold voice cut in. “Obey my order, please—at once.”

Handforth repeated the general’s words in choking Hindustani. Behind him, Moray stammered to the 97th. The black shakos rippled down. The men laid their rifles on the ground and straightened up. The British Officers did not move. Rodney had heard Handforth’s order to them to stay in their places and, after a pause, Moray repeating it.

Handforth kissed the hilt of his sword and snapped it suddenly across his knee. He unbuckled his swordbelt and dropped it on the ground before him; fumbling at the two medals on his coat, he tore them loose and threw them down beside the broken sword. All the other British Officers in the two regiments were following his example.

Some sepoys stood stiffly at attention; some wept and threw down their medals and tugged at their buttons like their officers. They did not know what they had been going to do; many would have no idea even now. But whatever it was, it was gone, and in its room was disgrace. The Fusiliers stared along the rifle barrels at them; the portfires flared over the touch-holes of the cannon. They were sepoys of the Bengal Army, and they and their officers stood disgraced in
the presence of British private soldiers. The cannon loaded with powder but no shot pointed at Colonel Handforth’s stomach.

Rodney lowered himself stiffly to the ground. The torture, and the miles of dusty road were behind him. He had done his work and fulfilled his duty. He must go to the sepoys, the farmers, the friends, and help them stare down these white guttersnipes. He began to walk forward, a tic working in his left cheek.

The rissaldar leaned down from the saddle and caught his shoulder. “It’s not over yet, sahib-bahadur.”

The old man’s lips were white-rimmed, and his eyes shone with a dark compassion. Rodney stumbled to a halt and waited, the rissaldar’s thin hand biting into his shoulder. The horse nuzzled his back, and he caught at its snaffle.

The general rapped an order. The Fusiliers, holding their rifles in the aim, shuffled backward pace by pace, flowing back like the tide, slipping back between the rank of guns. At last they were pressed back against the walls of the houses, a sweep of dark scarlet on the housefronts, all their rifles pointing always inward. The row of guns stood nakedly exposed on the cobbles, so many lashes in the face, so many spears in the proud heart. The Bengal Native Infantry sighed together, and Rodney moaned; it was the sigh of the Bhowani night, the groaning crowd-wail.

A file of Fusiliers marched out of the Street of the Rawans and passed forward between the guns. In their ranks marched the sepoy of the passage, the man of Kishanpur. Behind him the pioneer sergeant of the Fusiliers, wearing the traditional apron, carried an axe and a hammer. The file halted.

The general said, “Colonel Handforth, translate after me to your men, please, phrase by phrase: Sepoy Girdhari Lall Pande, Eighty-second Bengal Native Infantry, having been found guilty of treason …”

“
Sipahi Girdhari Lall Pande, be-arsi Bengal ka paltan, sir
had ki qasur gunegar hone ki sabab se …
”

“… is sentenced to death, by being blown to death from a gun …”

“…
top phutne se maut ka saza hukm hogya …
”

“… the ancient and customary punishment of his crime…”

…
jo issi qasur ka am saza hai…”

“… the sentence will be carried out forthwith.”

“…
yeh saza ek dum karna ka hai.”

The pioneer sergeant ripped the buttons off Girdhari Lall’s chest. With a bayonet he slashed the back of the coat and tore it off savagely, rocking the man’s wide frame. Then he took his hammer and began to shackle on leg-irons, but Girdhari Lall burst free and marched out alone in front of the unshotted gun. There he arched back until the muzzle touched the centre of his spine.

The general called out, “British Officers, please move to a flank.”

Colonel Handforth flinched but did not move. No one moved, and the rissaldar’s grip tightened on Rodney’s shoulder.

Girdhari Lall shouted in a strong voice, “Remember Mangal Pande! Now and for ever! Rise! It is not too late. Rise!”

The general raised his hand, paused, and let it drop. The gunner dropped the fire to the touch-hole.

The air split and clapped together, and the boards on the windows rattled. Girdhari Lall’s head flew up and spun like a black football against the orange glare in the sky. The vacuum of the blast sucked back pieces of flesh and spattered the gunners with blood and bowels. The body flew apart like a bursting water jar, and a shower of entrails and pieces of bone and flesh splashed the faces of the British Officers and Indian sepoys. Colonel Handforth, his face a red mask, clapped his hands to his ears and rolled on the ground.

A fusilier fainted and fell clattering beside his rifle on to the cobbles. Rodney would have gone but for the hand so
hard on his shoulder that it hurt. The artillerymen looked out, grim and still, through eyes rimmed with blood. The houses were a wall of darkness and only the portfires twinkled in the square. The stars were going out, one by one, behind a low cloudbank. Thunder grumbled closer to the south, marching over the Mahadeo Hills down into the valley of the Nerbudda.

He stood a long time in darkness of mind. He had a new memory to set beside the others—the corpses in so many rooms and streets and gardens—and live with. The memory would not be of Girdhari Lall, but of the faces of the English gunners. It was right for them to execute a mutineer; but they had liked doing it. The tales had been told, and they had listened. They would behave like animals, and kill every Indian who crossed their path, and burn the land from end to end, and do it joyfully. “Ruin and merciless hatred …”

From a long way off he heard the general’s small voice. “Eighty-second and Ninety-seventh Regiments of Bengal Native Infantry, march back to your lines in cantonments, in that order. British Officers, I look to you to stay with your men and keep them in the lines, in good discipline, until I can issue further orders.” He paused a long moment, and spoke gently. “Gentlemen, it was for them.” And, suddenly harsh, “
March off!”

There was a silent wait. Then, one by one, muttered half-hearted commands; the tramp and crash of professional fighting infantry on the march, but lacking something—no arms in their hands, no steel at their hips; swinging into step, rhythmic, but the rhythm dead and cold.

When Rodney looked up the square was almost empty. A few fusiliers were gathering up the rows of abandoned arms and throwing them into two bullock carts. Nearby a groom held a torch, the red glare of it shining on the general’s face. The general did not know how to weep; and he was in the care of his Almighty, so perhaps he did not feel the pains of other men. But his face was soft as he turned to the rissaldar and said in English, speaking slowly, “Rissaldar-
sahib, under God, India is in your hands tomorrow. May He guide you.”

The man in the worn blue and gold uniform looked at the general. He did not understand English, but he understood what had been said to him. The realization burst on Rodney, then, that the Bombay Lancers had not been disarmed. The rissaldar’s grim old face showed nothing. He saluted, swung his horse, and trotted out of the square. Rodney stared at the general, his heart suddenly pounding and over-full. After everything, after the massacres and the murders and the execution and the hate, the general would throw on the troopers of the Lancers this staggering cross. He was not asking them to be loyal to the British, or to the enemies of the British, but to hold faith with themselves who were simple men and had sworn an oath and under it had taken the Company’s arms. This was not the General’s Almighty, or the shade of Napoleon, but love which spoke.

It was dark. Sir Hector fumbled in his pocket and brought out a small book. The groom held up the torch so that its light fell on the pages. In the empty square Sir Hector began to read aloud the Christian service for the burial of the dead. A grave and reverent sincerity lifted his voice, and he almost sang. The party of Fusiliers went on with their noisy work, not knowing or caring what the little man was doing now. Rodney, numbed by many shocks and wonders, listened to the words and, between the words, to the rifles and bayonets crashing, ringing into the carts.

At the end Sir Hector closed the book and said in an altered tone, “Come, Captain, let us go to our place. The enemy will attack two hours after dawn.”

T
HE TENSION flowed out of him in the night of waiting—a thunderous night, electric but rainless. The merciless urgency of the past weeks had reached its climax at dusk, in the roar of the execution gun. The future lay in the lap of the battle which would be won or lost, here and now, without hurry. The rains must break soon, but they could not affect the outcome now. They would drop the final curtain of a tragedy, to announce its ending and fix its result unchangeably in the mould of history.

When the morning came he saw that the river ran only seven hundred yards wide, and he saw the twinkle of bayonets, spear-points, sabres, and guns on the far bank. The dawn pressed down like lead on a world waiting for rain, so that the smoke of the enemy’s cooking fires did not drift away but made a hazy line above the scrub jungle at the edge of the fields. The level bases of the clouds scraped the roofs of the city behind him, and dimmed the lustre of the Rani’s standard hanging from the tower of the ruined fort across the river. The water tumbled over the rock reefs in the ford and ran smooth and oily between. Buildings cast no shadows because the sun, after its rising, hung invisible behind the clouds and spread its heat and light through all the surcharged air.

He stared across the river, straining his eyes into the sourceless glare of the day. Directly opposite, dots and blobs and squares of colour moved in rhythmic patterns among the faded green of the foliage, and he saw that the enemy infantry were forming columns. The white of their trousers flickered to and fro in the scrub, and their bayonets were already fixed. Failing a last-moment flank march along the river bank, which would be dangerous because of the watch
ing British guns, their attack must surely come straight across the river in the shallowest part of the ford, along the line of the Deccan Pike. Here, in front of Rodney, the Fusiliers stood ready to receive it. They were in the British soldier’s favourite formation, a threadlike scarlet line, behind the low mud wall which marked the river’s flood level. In the centre of the line a gap in the scarlet was densely filled by the blue coats and brass guns of Cable’s troop. There the soldiers had broken down the mud wall so that the muzzles of the guns could be depressed to sweep the slope of cracked red earth leading up from the water’s edge.

The ford was wide, and all this was at the downstream, western end; horsemen could cross anywhere from here for a quarter of a mile upstream, to the right Beyond the right of the Fusiliers’ line the walls of the city stood back a few yards from the top of the sloping bank, and that long strip of flat ground was empty of men; sticks and stones, dead dogs and little heaps of garbage littered it—but no soldiers. Four hundred yards up, the walls of the city bent away from the river, and there, at the point which marked the eastern, upstream limit of fordable water, fifteen or twenty mango trees stood in a lonely huddled grove above the bank. The troop of Bombay Lancers waited under its dark green leaves, but Rodney could not see them. He turned away, frightened of his thoughts, but he could not stop them. Sir Hector had posted the Lancers there to guard the flank—and they were not gods or heroes but Mahrattas, Indians, Hindus, men of flesh and blood, and heart and spirit and brain.

Across the river the sabres of the enemy cavalry (the 60th, the enemy!—he laughed shortly and bit his lip) the sabres twinkled, an acre of spilled diamonds behind the centre of their infantry. The Dewan might send
them
cantering to cross the ford up there in face of the Lancers. They’d move too fast for the guns to hurt them much until they got into the water, and then it might be too late. What if the Lancers couldn’t hold them—wouldn’t? Why should they, with the
brown girls ripped and flyblown and bloated in the streets and murder in men’s eyes? What if a torrent of sabres—and lances—poured down that noisome strip of river bank and struck the Fusiliers in flank?

Trrr
rmp
, trrr
rmp.
He lifted his head in quick astonishment. After the double roll of drums, the bands struck up in the lilting swell of “Lilliburlero”; he remembered when the bandmaster was having so much trouble teaching the tune to the 88th’s band. Trrr
rmp
, trrr
rmp
, and the shrill fifes. The Dewan must have gone mad; or was this the signal for mutiny, gone tragically astray? On the far bank the bushes waved and shook and of a sudden were bright with colour. In nine columns, three dark green of the 13th, three primrose of Kishanpur, three scarlet of the 88th, the enemy moved down to the river’s edge, their bayonets flickering like steel carpets in the livid light. On the right and left the white trousers of the sepoys swung in regular rhythm; in the centre the Kishanpur soldiers’ bare legs were almost invisible against the earth, and their yellow coats came on like floating flowers. At the head of the 88th the Colours hung limp on the staffs—the Union of Great Britain at the right, the Regimental of the Honourable East India Company at the left. These were the Colours which used to hang in the mess, cased and crossed like huge rockets, under a portrait of Queen Victoria. The Kishanpur infantry surrounded two primrose standards, and by them rode a single man on horseback. Rodney recognized the Dewan and no longer heard the strains of the massed bands. He threw away the cheroot and felt the tip of his bayonet with his finger. The columns marched on and into the water. The 60th Light Cavalry were not with them. He slowly ground the stub of the cheroot under his heel and tried to dry the palms of his hands on his torn trousers.

Behind him Sir Hector, benignly disinterested, peered down on the scene from a flat housetop, rocking his five feet and one inch back and forth on heels and toes, his hands clasped under the tails of his frock coat. The Fusiliers had
unbuttoned their coats and put handkerchiefs under their shakos in a futile attempt to protect their necks from the all-pervading sun. The sweat soaked dark through the scarlet tunics; the cheap black dye of their cuffs ran, and stained their foreheads as they wiped them with their sleeves. Under the mixed colours their faces were strained and white, and ugly with expectancy. Piroo squatted comfortably by Rodney’s heels, his fingers in his ears. Cable’s guns, lined up wheel to wheel, poked silently over the shattered wall; by them the portfires flared out like a row of street lamps. Upstream all was quiet; in the deep water downstream fish were rising and a moving crocodile dragged light ripples under the bank. Beneath the music of the bands he heard the swish and splash of wading men. The general nodded.

The scene shivered, split in horizontal bars, and came wavering together again. A single concussion rocked his head. The eight six-pounders of Cable’s troop had fired all together. The shock chased trembling shudders across the water, and before they died the guns fired again and sent new little waves to run shivering after them.

The foremost ranks of wading infantry dissolved. Men plunged hither and thither, turning back, losing their balance, falling over. The Colours faltered and swayed wildly. On the far bank the music trailed away in a discordant cacophony of sound. Cable’s gunners fired with quick savage precision; in the distinct regular pauses between the explosions Rodney heard the wail and shout of the stricken army. A black patch covered one of the Dewan’s eyes.

The artillery’s regular fire, the parade-ground stillness of the Fusiliers, the stretch of quiet river, all gave the battle a detached and panoramic quality. This was a painting—this carnage in the water, those dragging shapes and lumps which were men and shakos and knapsacks and severed legs, those light dots running to and fro on the far bank.

He saw a puff of smoke jet out from the scrub on the right of the Pike, opposite the ruined fort. The shell shrieked by and exploded against a temple behind Cable’s guns. Dust
settled in a grey pall as the thud of the piece crept lagging after. One by one more guns opened fire, and he counted anxiously: fourteen or fifteen altogether, including twelve-pounders. The gunners over there were amateurs and they had not had much time to practise with their new weapons—still, it was a heavy weight of metal. Fountains of dirty water sprang up from the river, balls whizzed far overhead; but already they were beginning to steady their aim.

Under the British fire the Kishanpur infantry broke ranks. Rodney watched grimly; they had never met anything like this, or been given the training and discipline to face it. For a minute or two the sepoy regiments looked to be in equally bad shape; then the Native Officers got control and the regiments continued to advance. For one moment—a moment of mixed exultation and horror—he thought the Dewan would allow them to press home the hopeless attack. Then through the smoke and the turmoil of broken water he saw men wading across the front of the columns, shouting and gesticulating. At once the sepoys turned about, each in his place, and the regiments ploughed back as steadily as they had advanced, while the guns bit off piece after piece from the rear of the columns and strewed the wreckage in the river. The Kishanpur infantry became a distraught mob, their yellow coats everywhere—upstream, downstream, scrabbling through the green and scarlet ranks, running in clusters along the far bank. One, in his crazed panic, splashed furiously towards the British and reached the shelving slope in safety; at a word a single Fusilier stepped out of rank, leaned on the wall, and shot him in the head.

The enemy shells burst over the line of British guns in a steady crescendo. A pair of artillerymen sank down by their piece; another dropped in the dust and crawled round in circles on his hands and knees. The dust cloud rose thicker, drifting sluggishly to the east across the front. Over there the bands began to play defiantly louder, but uneven now. The river was quiet again, and nothing to mark the slaughter; all drifted down on the stream, except a corpse bent over
a snag, jerking and swaying as the current tugged at its shoulders.

The opposing artilleries settled down to a duel. Rodney breathed out in a long slow sigh, lit a fresh cheroot to stay the shaking of his hands, and looked about him. The stakes were on the board, all the love gone for nothing, and the dispute left for decision to the blind cannon. The infantry must stand and listen while St. Barbara of the Artillery spoke.
Ultima ratio regis
—the king’s last argument He glanced upstream. Today the last word probably lay in the heart of a man, an old nearly toothless horseman from the Deccan plateau.

The enemy bombardment was concentrating on Cable’s troop. A direct hit blew George Harris, at Sir Hector’s side, into a red mush; splinters droned endlessly over the wall, and men fell silent in the dirt; the wall crumbled; the Fusiliers shifted uneasily as stray shells struck their line, and when their officers were not looking they would peer secretly round at the prim little general. Across the river the steel-tipped hedge of colour had re-formed, and flurries in it marked where British shells ploughed through.

Rodney felt his mind slipping away from him as the heat and noise and dust racketed him to the edge of insanity. To bring it back, he tried to keep the ash long on his cheroot; like that he wouldn’t wince or duck involuntarily as the shells swished past Surely to God no one could stand this much longer—not very much longer?

Still the guns cracked at his eardrums. The Fusiliers relaxed their shoulders, mopped their brows, and watched the gunners die, each man thanking God that choking hand was not at his throat. The clouds settled lower overhead. Rodney ground his teeth: stick it out—for a century they’d been drumming it into the sepoys there over the river. His mind leaped back eleven years. He saw the field of Chillianwallah, where he and they had stood for murderous hours through the unseen battle of the cannon. He remembered his terror, and Jemadar Narain’s stern compassion, supporting him
without weight of words. They’d stuck it out together then. He groaned. Not very much longer—it couldn’t be.

After an hour the British rate of fire had slowed perceptibly. Blue-coated gunners sprawled beside their guns and died of heat-stroke where they lay. Cable’s lieutenant knelt on the ground, his brass helmet bright beside him and spurts of blood dyeing the crest. An artillery sergeant caromed, babbling, along the sides of the houses like a drunken ape, to collapse frothing at Rodney’s feet. A gunner threw down his ramrod and ran down the bank and plunged into the river. The dripping, sweaty dead were dragged out of the way and piled round the caissons in a welter of splintered wood, twisted iron, and spilled powder. Direct hits overturned three of the eight guns so that their muzzles pointed at the sky or rammed at an angle into the dust.

Over the pandemonium bugles blared across the water. Shells howled in at Cable’s troop, breaking the distant band music into tiny dislocated snatches. The Fusiliers straightened their backs and stood alert, a little eased now and not frightened.

For the second time the bushes on the far bank parted, the masses of colour wheeled and swung down through them, down the bank and into the water. The formation was the same; the Kishanpur infantry lost their line and dressing before they reached the water; still there was no sign of the cavalry. Looking now, as the heads of the columns approached in the river, Rodney saw the expressions on the faces of the sepoys, and felt sick. As they reached the centre point of the stream Cable screamed, “
Action front! Canister!”
The muzzles swung, paused, and poured out long streams of orange fire. After the duel only three of them remained in action, and those undermanned. They fired irregularly, each crew as fast as it could. Cable had taken station as layer on the centre gun and shouted continuous commands in a cracked voice.

At the third round the Kishanpur infantry broke and scattered. Rodney saw the Dewan using the flat of his sword,
then the edge, on the men struggling back past his horse. The golden youth who had been the Ensign of the Bodyguard cannoned into the tight scarlet ranks of the 88th and scrabbled insanely to get through them, away from the canister scythes. A havildar of the 88th lifted his rifle and shot him down.