Zemindar (117 page)

But behind us the cannonade continued, and around us, everywhere, armed men were watchful. We were still within range of the enemy.

In a meadow studded with huge mango trees, within sight of the shattered walls of the Sikander Bagh, families were taking their ease. It was the battle for these very walls that I had glimpsed from the roof of the hospital three days before, when a neighbour had loaned me his fieldglass and I had caught the glint of morning sunshine on massed bayonets. I had turned away, escaping the sight. But here the rebels had been cut to pieces by the Highlanders in a final frenzied blood-letting before they stormed on to the Residency, and here 1,857 bodies had been counted after the carnage. Some of those bodies, we were told, still lay unburied in the fly-infested, stinking space that had once been the flowery, fountain-flowing Garden of Alexander.

Sir Colin’s staff had prepared well for us. Under the trees, food was set out: bread, butter and jam, biscuits and platters of fresh fruit. Huge ‘dixies’ of tea steamed on the usual cook-stoves of three bricks and a few smouldering dungpats. Kate, Jess and I loaded ourselves shamelessly with all that was offered, then retired to a eucalyptus grove where we had tethered Rosinante and partook of our feast with concentration, never uttering a word until the last crumb was picked from our skirts and consumed, and the last drop of tea drained from the mugs. Then Jessie looked at Kate and myself, rose, collected the mugs and set off to have them refilled with wine, while Kate and I lay back and laughed at the picture of our stern Covenanter departing in search of strong liquor.

We drank the wine with even more appreciation than the tea, but not as silently; then watched the alarms and excitements around us with admirable detachment.

Children lost their parents, women mislaid their possessions, servants got separated from their mistresses, and distraught officers scampered through the crowd, trying to find the woman who had requested the cheese or the parent of a loudly objecting child summarily rescued from a tree. Tired infants bellowed for their beds; exhausted mothers smacked and scolded, and the grass was thick with discarded boots and shoes, their owners trying tenderly to restore their feet in the cool evening air. A subdued hubbub filled the area, growing at times to an appreciable roar, as new parties arrived and were screamed at in welcome by their friends.

A strange large soldier, bearded and grim, stood for five solid minutes looking down at Pearl, innocently and sweetly asleep in Jessie’s ample lap. Now and then he shook his head. At last he said, ‘That babe was born there?’

‘Not quite,’ I answered. ‘She was about two months old when we entered the entrenchment.’

‘And she lived!’

He bent down and laid one large finger along the baby’s thin cheek. ‘She lived!’ He shook his head, saluted and went away.

Closing my eyes, my back against a tree, I surrendered myself to this strange experience of liberty. The evening was closing in; to the west, behind the angry city we had left, the sky was rose and red, but to the east it was washed in that pellucid duck-egg green, lined with light, seen nowhere but in India. The copse of long-leaved eucalyptus trees stirred in the evening breeze with the sound of crumpling paper, showering us with lemony fragrance. Flights of emerald, ring-necked parrots shot screaming through the trees, and the mynas, unmindful of war, flight or fear, squabbled for their night-time perches in disregard of the human horde invading their dormitory.

Oliver! Oliver … I thought, and fell asleep with his name in my mind.

When I woke, darkness was upon us and I was cold on the cold dewy ground. Kate, who had drawn the second longest straw, was already mounted on Rosinante with Pearl in her arms. Cursing my sore feet and broken shoes, I joined Jessie behind her. No lights were allowed us and the night was like pitch.

Soon after we had taken our place in the column and left the hospitable meadow behind us, the disorganized cavalcade degenerated into chaos. The rough road, swept over during these past days by thousands of feet, hooves and wheels, was now a morass of sticky sand, scarred with shellholes and shallow trenches.

Carriages stuck axle-deep in the mire. Horses stumbled, spilling their loads into the confusion and unseating their riders. Bullock-carts sank to their flooring and were abandoned.
Doolie
bearers lost their way and carried frightened women far out into strange fields. The extended picket of the earlier hours of our journey had been replaced by an escort of troops, who, with great goodwill, slung their weapons on their shoulders to heave at carriages full of grumbling, tearful women, whip bullocks into motion, round up riderless horses, carry sleeping children, or thrash coolies attempting to desert with their loads.

Our party kept together by the simple expedient of my holding the reins and Jessie clutching the tail of Rosinante. I lost a shoe in sand, fell more than once, and had my bare foot trodden on by a passing infantryman, but I hung on to those reins as though they grew from my fingers.

For two and a half dreadful hours, confusion reigned in the unrelieved darkness, a heaving turmoil of seemingly directionless movement, during which we somehow covered the miles to the Dilkusha. At last, after a halt due to some mishap further up the column, we learned that we had arrived. At once there was pandemonium, everyone abandoning their places in the line to search for friends, quarters and food. The earliest arrivals had been lucky and were already settled for the night, but the arrangements made for our reception proved entirely inadequate for the numbers. What few tents had been erected were already occupied, we were told by a harassed officer, as also was that part of the Dilkusha Palace not already occupied by Sir Colin’s staff.

The night resounded with complaints, grumbles and querulous pleas for help, while embarrassed officers and bewildered men tried to cope with a couple of hundred exhausted, ill-tempered women, children and their cohort of attendants.

‘Oh for Toddy-Bob!’ I sighed, as we looked around wondering which direction might lead us to shelter and a bed. ‘He’d have us housed and fed in a trice whatever the circumstances.’

‘We must look for an officer’s mess,’ Kate rallied herself to decide. ‘There’s bound to be someone I know. This is the sort of occasion when a man is indispensable.’

So Jessie took the sleeping Pearl, Kate dismounted, and still all holding firmly to some part of Rosinante or her saddlery, we set off.

The darkness of the vast park was almost impenetrable as we threaded our way through tents and carriages,
doolies
and limbers, mounds of baggage and supplies, bells of arms and stacked cases of ammunition, and over lines of weary soldiers sleeping imperturbably on the ground. Here was a corral of horses, fine well-fed ones of the relief, there bullocks dozed heavily, recumbent in a cloud of gnats; camels belched in rude surprise as we disturbed them, and elephants flapped huge ears in curiosity. Small cow-dung fires glimmered under the trees as servants smacked out
chapattis
between their palms, swinging easily on their haunches in the firelight. Above them, hanging upside down among the mango leaves, fruit bats squeaked like mice, red eyes reflecting the flame.

The palace itself was lighted and alive with officers, but so many families had gathered on the wide verandah waiting for help that we decided we would be quicker served elsewhere, even if by chance. But we wandered to the very outskirts of the park and found nothing in the way of a mess tent. At the end of our endurance, beginning to feel that we could sleep standing up if necessary, we were hailed by a mounted officer.

‘Ladies … please! Would any of you know a Mrs Barry? Mrs George Barry?’ he called out of the gloom.

‘Glory be to God! We’re saved and just in time!’ groaned Kate, then called out that she was Mrs Barry.

The officer cantered up to us and dismounted.

‘Mrs Barry?’ He held out a neatly gloved hand, peering towards Kate.

‘It is, and you, if I’m not very much mistaken, are Johnny James!’

‘Mrs Barry! I …’

‘Yes, I know! You never would have recognized me. But it’s me all the same. Laura, Jessie—this young man used to be one of my boys, and not so long ago either. Lieutenant James.’

‘Why, Mrs B, when I heard that you had been in Lucknow all through, I swore I’d find you out and see you comfortable. I’d heard … about your husband!’

‘There you are, you see,’ Kate said triumphantly. ‘My boys never forget me.’

‘But this is wonderful, Mrs B. I was beginning to think …’

‘Ah, well, no, I’ve not succumbed yet! But if I don’t soon find some place to lie down and sleep, I probably will, and so will my friends.’

‘Come along with me. I’ve cleared my tent for you and we can squeeze the other ladies in somehow. Oh, and I see you have a dear little baby with you!’

This is no time for sentimentality, I thought to myself ungratefully, and why will a man gush over a baby who can get along quite well without a bed, when he has three exhausted females on his hands?

Lieutenant James was not the Army’s most intelligent officer, but he was kind. Soon we were seated on groundsheets before a fine fire, drinking more wine while a meal was prepared for us. The tent would just take the three of us packed like sardines, with Pearl squeezed somewhere between us. None of us, I am afraid, gave a thought to where Lieutenant James himself would sleep that night.

The meal appeared. Ham, bread and butter, cheese and a pitcher of milk. But the day had been too much for me. I ate two mouthfuls of ham, excused myself, crawled into the tent and was asleep before I had closed my eyes.

They tell me that dire confusion continued all that night. Soon after the last of the families were in, the sick began to arrive, and the great treed park resounded with noise and bustle until morning. I heard none of it, and it was nearly noon the next day before I awoke.

Lieutenant James’s servant brought me hot water to wash in, and later a meal to which, this time, I did full justice. There were eggs, I remember. Two boiled eggs and toasted bread.

Rested and refreshed, I only then realized how painful my right foot was from having been walked on for some considerable distance without a shoe. The sole showed several cuts and gashes, the toes were bruised and swollen, and blisters, formed during the first part of the journey, had burst and were suppurating. I cleaned it as best I could, and later in the day, on a visit to the quarters of the sick, Kate managed to procure some salve, lint and a bandage for me.

The fearful suffering of the wounded as they were borne away from the Residency had caused many deaths, including that of dear, dour Dr Darby. Those who had survived described to Kate something of the horrors of the journey they had made. Packed one on top of the other into ambulances and litters, jogged, pushed, pulled and dropped along the length of the hazardous and obstructed route we too had followed, wounds burst open afresh, fevers soared, splints on fractured limbs worked loose, dressings were torn off by the struggling limbs of companions, and they were the luckiest who had lapsed into unconsciousness. Now every doctor was hard at work trying to undo the damage of the march, but within a few days the sick would have to endure yet further torment as they were moved on to Cawnpore.

For the next two days we continued quietly recouping our strength, while the troops brought order into the camp, throwing up streets of tents in orderly rows under the trees, digging latrines, providing cookhouses and fuel, removing the various animals to a distance, and cosseting the children with pots of jam from their own ration, and rides on elephants and camels. The women sat in the dappled sunshine in peaceful idleness, or read and reread the letters that had awaited them at the Dilkusha. The children revived in the bright, clean air of the park, and were seldom seen without a crust of the long-coveted white bread or a paper squill full of the even more longed-for sugar. Even without Toddy-Bob, we managed to procure soap and the services of a
dhobi
to wash and iron our clothes.

Always in the distance, however, we could hear the muted cannonade from the city, where the men of the Old Garrison and the first relief made ready to withdraw. Those of us capable of thinking of something other than our new wellbeing were dismayed at the news that General Havelock, just created Sir Henry Havelock, was said to be on the verge of death.

Despite the salve and bandage, my foot remained painful and swollen, and I was happy enough to remain in a canvas chair placed outside Lieutenant James’s tent, relying on Kate and Jessie to bring me whatever news they garnered in their wanderings around the camp. On the second day Jessie, wise in the ways of regimental bazaars, brought me a pair of scarlet slippers to replace my single outworn shoe. They were pretty things, with pointed, curly toes ending in a bobble of scarlet and gold and embroidered in gold thread, but my foot forbade me trying them on. So I placed them near me and spent much time admiring them, the first finery that had come my way in many months.

At sundown on the 22nd November, as I sat alone by the fire waiting for the others to return to the tent for supper, Ungud appeared out of the gathering shadows, leading a fine mare.

‘Salaam!’
he said, touching his forehead as he bowed his head, then continued without preamble, cutting into my exclamations of pleasure and surprise. ‘I have brought him a horse, see! A good one. He will need it.’

I knew it was for Oliver, and my heart leapt.

‘It is a good horse,’ Ungud reiterated, in case I was too foolish to realize the fact, ‘and many cast covetous eyes at it. I will take it to the lines and remain to watch it until he comes.’

I agreed with alacrity.

The small brown man, dressed as scantily as usual, with his staff, untidy turban and string-soled sandals, edged closer to me.

‘They come … tonight!’ he whispered.

I nodded silently. If Ungud said so, then it was so, but I could guess that this was information neither of us should have had.

‘I left three nights ago,’ he continued, ‘when the sick left. Since then I have scoured the villages for this animal. That the
Lat-sahib
should have no horse of his own is a thing of shame, but more … I could not remain because I did not wish to see the
Paltan-log
and the
Sahib-log
walk out and leave the place that was theirs in the night. In the darkness—like cowards or thieves.
Lat-sahib
Lawrence must be shamed in his grave, and no man can think it right that it should happen thus.’