Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (15 page)

The other pistol! Ram stared around wildly. He saw it, dived for it, had it, cocked it. The Turk turned, wheeling Carla before him. But Ram was faster and circled him. He fired and the man groaned,

a small hole showing in his back. He fell, dragging the girl down. Ram's ball had shattered his spine.

Carla gave a shuddering moan as she freed herself from the dead clutch. Eyes glazed, mouth quivering, she stared at Ram.

"I—I thought they'd kill ye!" she gasped and ran to hold him close. "Oh, lad, I thought ye was dead!"

Freeing himself, he watched the trees for other enemies. Then he caught up the rest of his clothes and his weapons. "Come."

She too grabbed her clothes and they slid down the bank to the beach and raced toward the safety of the lines.

Brian O'Duane stared indifferently at the steaming dish set before him, numbed because his mission was being thwarted by the Prince's sickness. Bad enough that dysentery had turned the Austrian lines into a vast cemetery; but should Eugene die, the Turks could capture Vienna itself within a month. It was a poor time, Brian realized, to arrive as an emissary from James Stuart.

He glanced around the long room. Moonbeams streamed through a hole a ball had made in the roof, though the windows were boarded up lest the candlelight be seen from Belgrade's citadel. Count George Browne had offered him a bed in his tent, but had recommended this makeshift tavern, run by a sutler, as providing the best fare to be had within the lines. Later, Browne would join him with other Irish officers in the Austrian service.

He counted upon their support, when Eugene recovered, to obtain him an audience with the Prince, to whom he had brought a proposal: James' advisers felt confident that the great general would soon win against the Turks and, seeking new glory, could be induced to lead an invading army against Britain. It was a delicate matter to negotiate; but Brian, despite his disappointment in James during last year's debacle in Scotland, had volunteered to ride half across Europe to accomplish it.

Hunger brought him out of his reverie and he fell to. When he finished, he stretched out his booted legs, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, suddenly conscious that he had ridden thirty miles since morning.

Thus he did not see the red-faced colonel with the deep scar who had come in with a lad and was followed respectfully by sev-

eral other officers. And, understanding very little German, he could not appreciate that the colonel's own German was far from pure-All he did know was that the newcomers' voices competed jarringly with a roll of gunfire that indicated some night sortie.

Dick was in fine fettle. Why not, since he was celebrating Ram's proven manhood? He'd already toasted the boy's confession. But, not wishing to be seen drunk before certain subordinates, he had brought a selected few here: Lieutenant Colonel von Bohlen, three Austrian captains and two French lieutenants. All were drinking slivovitz, the raw plum brandy of the country that scorched a man's throat and often made him see double.

"Gentlemen!" He had to bellow to be heard above the gunfire. "I give you a toast—up on the table, Ram, and let all get a sight of you—I give you Volunteer Anstruther, who today spraddled his first whore and killed his first foes!"

"Hoch, hochr the Austrians responded. "A ta sante, mon brave!" the Frenchmen applauded.

Ram turned beet red, first with embarrassment, then with anger. First whore—Carla? God, no, she was his love, a part of himself! "Father," he appealed in English. "Father, please don't!"

"Drink, damme," Dick ordered. "Respond to the toast. 'Tis a rare honor they're giving you." He reverted to his clumsy German. "The lad's a trifle shy, but for all that he's done better than I did. True, before I was his age, I'd split a dozen wenches; but I was nineteen before I spitted my first man—at Kinsale siege, back in '90. But that was no great feat, seeing he was an Irish rebel who ran so hard I had to thrust him through the back."

"You lie!"

Dick stiffened. "Himmel, who speaks?"

"I." Brian stood up. However poor his German, he had understood Dick's boast. He spoke now in French. "I repeat, you lie!" All the old hatred surged back. Slowly he crossed the dirt floor.

Dick awaited him, pain lancing his head. Who, in God's name, was this rogue who gave him the lie? "I like not your way, sir," he said deliberately in English.

Normally, Brian still refused to speak the loathed tongue, though he had learned it long since from necessity. "You lie, saying any

Irishman ever turned his back on you. I, an Irish prince, huri it in your teeth!"

Swaying a little, Dick glared at him. "Damnation, am I to be insulted thus before my own officers?" He tore off his white coat. The slivovitz burning in his brain drove him into a red fury. "I'll not suffer it! Let's see the length of your steel. Irishman, and we'll soon know who lies!"

"Father!" Though muzzy with brandy, Ram felt swift fear. This tall stranger with the white eyebrows looked dangerous.

"Back, boy! Gentlemen, I call you to witness my honor's been questioned. Lights, and a clear space!"

Von Bohlen, well versed in these affairs, became his second. One of the Frenchmen offered Brian his services and received his whispered name and rank.

The duelists faced each other at swords' length.

"En garde!"

As the blades met, Dick knew he was engaging an implacable enemy. Already sweating, he cursed because the flickering candles seemed to be dancing and the dirt floor heaving. But his wrist was strong and he was sobering rapidly. He sensed an opening and lunged, was parried, but saw a red gash on his foe's right arm. Caution! came an inner warning. Tire him, don't expose yourself.

To the onlookers, it was a fight between a stocky English bulldog and a lean Irish hound. Brian's sword was like quicksilver as it sought an opening. His brain was icy, fed by cold fury. Sasanach! He even had time to regret this encounter had come before he could be presented to Eugene. Not that he feared this English liar, whom he knew he would kill, but because that very result might prejudice his mission in the prince's mind. From a corner of his eyes he glimpsed the thin boy with the auburn hair, and the sight, bringing memories of his own lost child, added fuel to his hatred. He knew by Dick's gasping breaths he was tiring.

Now! His blade was part of himself as he thrust forward, penetrating cloth and flesh. The coup brought him face to face with his victim and for an instant they stared into each other's eyes. Dick's were bulging, his mouth opening to emit a bellow that never came. Instead, he sagged, wrenching the saber from Brian's grasp. His legs

drew up and his hands clenched spasmodically, his limbs relaxed and he grew still.

A long-drawn sigh arose from the onlookers. The next instant blows rained on Brian's chest. The boy's convulsed face before him, he heard him scream, "You killed my father! You killed my father!"

BOOK TWO

WHITE COAT

CHAPTER 6 BANKIPUR,

1721-22

"Land ho!"

Ram heard the cry as he came up from below. Racing aft past some seamen and bleary-eyed soldiers, he gained the poop.

"Where, Heer Matt?" he demanded eagerly.

The officer handed him a spyglass. With it he swept the horizon until he saw a tiny object—a solitary palm that seemed to be growing out of the oily sea itself.

"Mouth of the Hooghly, main channel of the Ganges." The mate pointed overside at the now yellow-pink water. "Soon we must heave to for a pilot." He sighed gustily. "Ach, it's good to arrive!"

Ram agreed devoutly. UEsperance was seven dreary months out of Ostend, with brief calls only at the Cap Verdis, the Cape, Madagascar and Dutch-held Trincomalee in Ceylon. And now, having crossed the Bay of Bengal, the great river lay ahead.

Handing back the glass. Ram hurried forward to the beakhead, whence he watched the distant palm turn into two, three, then an entire clump growing on a sandy spit.

Soon the sea became myriad sparkles of light, fringed by more palms, mangroves and marsh reeds that gave off a sour mud smell. A strange craft appeared, made of two canoes joined together by a platform piled high with fish nets and carrying a triangular sail. It came closer, dancing gaily across the water, its near-black crew wearing only turbans and scanty loin rags.

More of these catamarans were passed. Then a lugger-type craft ran alongside and, after much screamed bargaining between its crew

and the captain, a native, wearing a cocked hat, a gold-laced coat and a mere breechcloth, scrambled aboard. The pilot.

Ram grinned joyously. India! Land of Ophir, of Golconda, of magnificence untold; land of the Great Mogul. A far cry from Belgrade and Dalesview!

"hne, Lieutenant Sahib, sight of my country enjoying you are?" a voice inquired in Bengali.

"hxre, Munshi Sahib, good to be near land it is," Ram returned haltingly in the same tongue. For Babu Cov^^asji Mukerji had been teaching Bengali to the factors, writers and troops aboard. A silk merchant, he had daringly voyaged to Europe with his rich wares and was now returning to Dacca, where he would also act as agent for this nascent Ostend East India Company, most profitably, he hoped.

"Wah, the very air delight to me brings. Few of my people across the Black Water traveled have, but returned I am, to voyage no more." He pointed, beaming. "A temple—there, the shore near. And beyond a mosque is. Arre, good to be home it is."

Then both had to give place to seamen, who freed the stocks from the cat-heads and let the anchors rattle down into the mud.

Ram went below, to breakfast with the factors, the writers and Oberleutnant Karl Ritter. The latter, chewing on a chunk of salt pork, belched. "Himmel, had I realized the months we'd live on this foul stuff, I'd have starved first in Vienna. Herr Gott, I'm turning into a pig myself!"

Ram stifled a laugh. Ritter was piglike, with his tumed-up nose, small blue eves, colorless lashes and eyebrows. But he commanded the troops and was Ram's senior. He was also a bully.

Jan van Hoven stood up. "Gentlemen, welcome to Bengal. A hundred and twenty miles upriver is Chinsurah, where for ten years I served the Dutch Company. No doubt I've mentioned that before!" he grinned guiltily. "Our own factory will be between Chinsurah and English Calcutta below, also close to the French Company's Chandernagore. We'll be beset by rivals, so I beg you give them no offense, or they may complain of us to the Great Mogul."

Ritter scowled. "I've fifty men to punish any who insult us, be they heathens, Dutch, French or boastful English!" He shot Ram a sneer. The British desertion of 1712 was still unforgotten.

"The chief trader will decide our actions," reminded Hendrick

Rooses, the junior factor. "Mijnheer van Hoven, myself and even you must obey him. After all, Mijnheer Hume served the English Company many years and will know how to deal with it and others."

"He awaits us at Bankipur," van Hoven sniffed, having hoped to be made chief trader himself. But he'd left the Dutch Company years before and returned to Europe, so must start again under Hume.

Breakfast over, the younger men gathered on deck to wait for the muddy flood to change and be borne back into the river. With the ship hove to, the heat became oppressive.

Ram climbed up into the gig, which was lashed upon the cutter on the starboard side. Here he had some shade from the mainmast, yet was high enough to see over both bulwarks. He drowsed, aware of the sounds around him but hugging his own thoughts. What lay before him? Adventure? The chance to become a colonel like Father? Father! As always. Ram's thoughts went back to the night of his murder—for it was murder to have killed him when he was drunk. Pictures formed: Father dead, blood oozing from his chest and mouth; himself being held by the officers as he tried madly to get at the victor, who sheathed his sword and walked out contemptuously. Then an orderly panting in, seeking Father with orders for his regiment to get under arms, the Prince would attack at dawn.

Ram's own part in the battle still had a nightmarish quality for him: Von Bohlen insisting harshly that Father would have expected his son to fight with the regiment. Then swirling mist, yawning trenches, contorted Asiatic faces; shooting, stabbing. And victory, with enormous spoils, the greatest triumph ever gained over the Turks, when Eugene led 50,000 inspired Europeans to beat 200,-000 infidels and pursue them, slaughtering them, for miles.

Ram had been ill afterward from grief and dysentery. People had been kind: Carla hovered devotedly before being dragged away by Meg; James Oglethorpe came and told him that Eugene himself had noted Ram's bravery and had promoted him to Fahrenjunker — officer cadet. But when Ram swore vengeance against the murdering Irishman, Oglethorpe said sternly that, as James Stuart's envoy, the man was inviolate; besides, he had already returned empty-handed to his exiled king.

When Ram rejoined the army, peace was being made and, aware that the Imperial forces would be cut, he tried for another British

commission. But with all Europe soon to be at peace, it was impossible.

Eugene became governor general of the Austrian Netherlands— that part of Flanders taken from Spain in 1712—and to compete with the British, Dutch and French, he sent trading ships to the Indies. The first two voyages paid so well that a company was formed, based upon Ostend, to have trading stations in India.

Ram had been back at Dalesview over a year when Eugene's letter came, offering him a coveted junior lieutenancy in the troops assigned to the company. Naturally, he was wild to accept; especially since Gammer was trying to turn him into a farmer. No, he was a soldier, would always be one, just like Father.

It was the generous trading rights the company offered its servants that decided Hannah. Hadn't many men returned wealthy from India after only a few years? So she gave Ram £500 capital with which to make a quick fortune to further improve Dalesview.

So here he was, with the company's vanguard to set up a factory on the Hooghly. Another would be started at Coblom, near British-held Madras. In fact, the Coblom-bound La Paix had kept company with L'Esperance as far as Trincomalee, carrying aboard it Haupt-mann von Bruck with the other half of the troops.