Rogue Officer (16 page)

Jack was more shocked by the jibe at his revered monarch than he was by the idea of selling arms to mutineers, but he said nothing, gripping the hand that was proffered and wishing the owner well. They parted at the fork of a dusty road, Hilversum heading west, towards Delhi, Jack and his men continuing south, hoping to hook up with a main column again. At one point they were knee deep in a field of flowers. The blooms brushed against their legs and left pollen marks on skin and clothes. Sajan picked the heads off one or two, until he was admonished by Raktambar.

Wynter surveyed the white-to-purple flowers with distaste.

‘What’s these ’uns, then? Cattle fodder?’

Gwilliams laughed.

King said, ‘What’s to laugh at, Corporal?’

Jack intervened. ‘These are opium poppies, Sergeant.’

Apart from his fanatical mapmaking, King had very little interest in much else. An innocent abroad. ‘I still don’t understand.’

‘This is a field of dreams. Opium is a narcotic. You’ve heard of opium, surely? It’s the basis of such medicines as laudanum.’

Jack spoke hesitantly. In the Crimea he had been wounded and ill enough to have had to rely on laudanum for a time. He remembered being addicted to it and even now he was involuntarily licking his lips. A habit hard to break.

‘The Chinese soldiers sometimes smoke it,’ said Wynter. ‘Lord, you oughta see ’em lying around lookin’ like they was floating on clouds or somethin’.’

‘In America too – mostly the workers on the railways,’ confirmed Gwilliams. ‘Had a taster myself once, but whiskey beats it in my opinion. There’s nothin’ so particular to the tongue as the amber liquid. I reckon high spirits is superior to damn funny dreams every time.’

They were heading down to Bareilly now, where they had left Campbell’s column. Sergeant King was amazed how peaceful and ordinary the countryside looked. It was a stifling hot day, it was true, and any sun-fearing creature who could find shade was in it, but there was no sign of the chaos into which India had been plunged this last year. Blood had flowed, both men and women of various races had been hacked to death or blown to bits in their thousands, yet the landscape showed none of this carnage.

There were women in billowing saris of pastel shades drifting here and there. Men stood and stared or lay on rattan beds outside their hovels. Elephants and camels watched the world through narrow eyes as they chewed whatever was within reach. Curs slunk by looking hopefully at the group, only to flop in a shadow when nothing was forthcoming. On the horizon, above the high trees, cumulous was gathering in grey towers. There were no running crowds screaming for revenge, no thunder of the captains urging their troops towards another slaughter. Just a world of slow-flowing rivers, the occasional astonishing foliage and sleepy-looking inhabitants.

‘What’s war for, anyhow?’ he said to himself, but unfortunately was heard by Private Wynter.

‘Well, it’s the proper state of affairs, an’t it?’ Wynter replied. ‘What work for soldiers, without no war?’

King, who envisaged a perfect world full of army mapmakers – or their equivalent craftsmen – had no answer for this. The army had given him his trade and he was not going to say nay to that.

Raktambar suddenly cried out. ‘East!’

Everyone dropped to the ground below the level of the poppies.

‘What have you seen?’ whispered Jack to his Rajput aide.

‘Soldiers on horseback.’

‘Ours or theirs?’

‘Too far away.’

Jack waited for a while, then lifted his head slowly to peer out. He could see the riders now, in the far distance. They looked like British cavalry but he couldn’t be sure. About twenty-five of them. On request King passed him a spy-glass and when he looked again he could see that they consisted of an officer with HM troopers.

Jack stood up and waved his arms. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Over here! Queen’s Army!’ A hot wind was blowing from the east, carrying his words towards the west in the opposite direction to the troopers. The officer in charge turned his mount and actually seemed to see Jack waving, but of course then Jack realized he was dressed in rags and looked more like a Gujar than a soldier. No cavalry worth its salt was going to ride half a mile to investigate the waving of a dubious-looking man in filthy cottons.

‘Up you get, they’ve gone,’ he said to his men, as the colourful troopers disappeared behind a ridge. ‘Sajan, fill the water bottles from that stream and let’s be on our way again.’

He was not too upset, since they were only a day or so away from Bareilly now, where he was sure there would be a British post.

They reached Bareilly two days later. The first people to see them walking into camp were Silvia and Delia Flemming. The barefooted girls came running towards Jack, their dresses flying in the breeze. Their faces, framed by curtains of long black hair, were full of delight.

‘Oh, my captain,’ cried Silvia, her black eyes flashing, ‘you have returned safe and sound to me.’

This sentence was repeated word-for-word by her sister, Delia, in the same melodramatic tones. Their yells brought their father to the door of his billet, followed by his Punjabi wife. The corporal, a stocky little man with grizzled hair, stood arms akimbo. His small-stemmed pipe was sticking out of his mouth and he was puffing furiously. Clearly this show of affection from his daughters did not please him. He called them back. They ignored him, clustering around Jack as if there were ten of them, rather than two.

‘Oh, your clothes are so dirty,’ Silvia said, trying to take off Jack’s kurta, presumably in order to wash it.

‘So dirty,’ repeated Delia, grasping a sleeve.

Jack tried, ineffectively, to wave the pair away. They were such a nuisance to him, these girls – but like many men he could not bring himself to make them hate him. There was that spark of vanity in him which was fanned to a faint glow by their flattery. They were indeed beautiful young women. Forbidden fruit which he would never in a million years dream of picking, and of course he realized it was his reluctance to return their favours which drew them to him. He knew the moment he showed any interest in them he would scare them away. Yet he could not do that either, being at heart a man who could not show false feelings in order to deceive someone.

Gwilliams stepped forward and grasped a slender wrist of each girl, pulling them away. ‘Leave the officer be, you vixens – ain’t you got no respect for authority?’

‘He is our charge,’ cried the girls together. ‘He is our captain.’

At that moment Corporal Flemming came over, vest collar and coatee unbuttoned, his bare head mussed. The corporal had been an East Anglian rustic before becoming a soldier and Norfolk men like to think their daughters angels. Angels these two may be from appearances, but little demons they were in character. Flemming took the stubby pipe out of his mouth and was indeed about to berate Jack for toying with his girls when Sergeant King beat him to the draw.

‘Corporal,’ King snapped, ‘keep these children of yours under control, if you please. You recognize the officer? Lieutenant Crossman of the 88th Connaught Rangers? These girls are a perfect nuisance and will not leave him alone. I realize there’s no harm in them, but it’s your responsibility to see they don’t bother officers in the performance of their duties.’

The corporal looked indignant and stuck his pipe back in his mouth. He folded his arms and glared defiantly at King.

‘And don’t give me your country looks, Corporal,’ King growled, ‘or you’ll feel the blunt edge of my fist on your chin.’

The corporal glanced at King’s fist and saw a formidable weapon: wisely he kept his peace, though not so his daughters.

‘You threaten our father!’ exclaimed Silvia. ‘He is our protector.’

‘Well, let him bloody-well protect you then,’ riposted King. ‘You’re a disgrace, both of you. Any daughter of mine would be brought up to be a polite and well-mannered girl, not a hoyden.’

Mrs Flemming rustled her sari noisily from the doorway of the billet and called out, ‘My daughters are respectable ladies.’

All this commotion brought someone to the door of the officers’ quarters. After a moment this person strode across the hard-packed earth to where the group were arguing.

‘What’s all this yelling and shouting?’ asked the man, an overweight major who blinked rapidly and a great deal. ‘Keep your peace, if you please.’ He turned to stare Wynter up and down. ‘Who are you people anyway? Are you the remains of Hodson’s men?’

Flemming and his daughters had wisely slipped quietly away, back to their billet.

Jack stepped forward. ‘Sir, I am Lieutenant Crossman, of the 88th. Could you direct me to a Major Lovelace? I have to report to him immediately.’

The major stared Jack in the eyes. ‘Major Lovelace? If he’s here I haven’t seen him, and I know who you are. You, sir, are under arrest. You’re the fellah Deighnton’s looking for – the deserter. Look at the state of you! You should be ashamed, sir, to be seen in that garb, in that state of filth. Are these your men? They’re under arrest too. You’re all under arrest. Guards?’ The last word was yelled, though no one answered it. After a moment the major swallowed his pride and said, ‘If you will accompany me, I shall take you to some quarters which you will be pleased to consider your prison until I can summon some sentries . . .’

‘This is preposterous,’ Jack snapped back at the major. ‘We are not deserters, sir, we are employed by Colonel Hawke and Major Lovelace – Queen’s Army – in the gathering of information. It is our job to go out as agents into the countryside and glean what we can of enemy troop movements, plans, and other vital facts which are no concern of yours. Is General Campbell here? He will vouch for me and my peloton. I might add we are exhausted, hungry and would like to wash. We’ve been out in the field for a good while.’

‘General Campbell has gone,’ replied the major, who looked as if he believed not a word of Jack’s defence. ‘Colonel Boothroyde is in charge here and I am his adjutant. I don’t know these people of whom you speak – their names mean nothing to me. Since I know everything that goes on around Bareilly, I would do – if it were the truth.’

‘Of course you don’t know them,’ replied an exasperated Lieutenant Crossman. ‘They’re concerned with intelligence. They keep a low profile, obviously. Look, is the correspondent William Russell still here? He knows me. Or Rupert Jarrard of the
New York Banner
?’ Jack looked towards the seemingly deserted streets of Bareilly, where only a chockra-boy lay asleep in the shade of a bullet-pitted wall. ‘There must be
somebody
here who knows me?’

‘Oh, there is,’ murmured the major, who had now seen a sergeant major and had motioned to him, ‘there’s Captain Deighnton, who is at this very minute out scouring the landscape for sight of you and your fellow deserters.’

Jack suddenly realized with a chill that the troopers he saw from the poppy field must have been Deighnton’s patrol. Having so obviously sown this story about defection Jack suspected the captain would not have taken prisoners. Jack had almost called down his own executioners on the heads of his men. Deighnton would have drilled those troopers – dragoons by the look of them – drilled them in the belief that they were hunting dangerous criminals. Or would he? The man seemed to wallow in the glory of the duel, so perhaps Jack was doing him an injustice? Perhaps it would have been enough to capture Jack and force him to duel? Who knew how the mind of a deviant like Deighnton actually worked.

‘Sarn Major,’ said O’Hay to the SNCO who was, incredibly, one of a single company of 88th, Jack’s regiment left behind when the rest marched out to join General Rose, ‘arrest these men.’

‘Sir!’ bawled the sergeant major, who turned and raised an eyebrow. ‘Civilians, are they?’

Soldiers were then summoned by the sergeant major’s powerful lungs and Jack and his men, including Sajan and Raktambar, were led away.

‘Sarn Major,’ Jack asked, as that man posted sentries outside the door of the hut to which they had been confined, ‘who’s your IC?’

‘You British, is it?’ asked the sergeant major, peering into the faces of his prisoners.

‘Myself, the corporal here, and that private over there – we are all of your regiment.’

The sergeant major cocked his head to one side and after a few moments fired several questions – some of them in Erse, or Irish Gaelic – at Jack and his two rankers, the answers to which would only have been known to a Connaught Ranger. He was surprised when they answered them correctly, then recognized Wynter’s name as being one of those who had at some time brought disgrace upon the 88th, though only in the form of whore-house brawls and drunken escapades. Gwilliams’ accent threw him a little and he asked where in the world someone got a twisted tongue like his.

‘Boone’s Lick, Missouri,’ replied Gwilliams. ‘How about yourn?’

The officer’s name, finally dragged out of the sergeant major, was not familiar to Jack, and he began to despair. One could get hung out here in the middle of nowhere, now that law had broken down and death was an everyday occurrence. Men who have witnessed the dismembering of women and children and had seen natives blown from cannons are likely to be slightly hardened to death and to treat it as common-place. If he managed to convince someone he was indeed an officer in the British Army, he might get them court martialled, but even that was uncertain. Sajan and Raktambar might be set free, but that was unlikely too. Any excuse or none was good enough to execute an Indian after such massacres and fighting. Jack realized they were in deep trouble, though King kept fulminating.

The sergeant said, ‘All they’ve got to do is look in my pack and see I’ve got mapmaking equipment. People are allowed to go out and make maps for the army’s use, aren’t they? How do they think maps get made? You can’t do it sitting on your backside in a bloody tent.’ He grumbled angrily to the sentries who were actually too scared of their sergeant major to reply to these rants.

Jack, as an officer, was removed from the presence of his men, put under open arrest and conveyed to separate quarters, a bungalow that appeared internally untouched by the recent fighting. Outside though was a wide stretch of ground where the rebel sepoys had been camped and the open latrines had still not been filled in. Although there were no human bodies, there were still dead camels and elephants rotting in the sun. Even with the shutters closed the stink hugged every corner of the house.