Zemindar (91 page)

It was a comfort to him to know that the loneliness of our struggle was only physical, and that far away, over thousands of miles of strange countries and cruel seas, our people felt for us, thought of us, organized assistance for us. He would have continued with what was in his letter, but Toddy-Bob entered the kitchen—Jessie said he must have smelt the whisky—and soon had the temerity to ask the question that had been on the tip of all our tongues.

‘You were there, then? In Cawnpore?’ he said when I had explained the presence of our guests. ‘Did you see it—the house, I mean?’

Corporal Dines looked at his young officer and shuffled his boots unhappily.

‘Yes. We were there,’ Billy Miles replied for both.

‘What really ’appened?’ Toddy pressed them to answer. ‘We’ve ’eard nothin’ but rumours, you understand, and a body’s got to know the truth sometime.’

The boys glanced at each other uneasily; then the corporal sank his face into his mug of whisky, shaking his head as he did so.

‘I … I was in the house, but some time after it … it had been cleaned up,’ said Lieutenant Miles. ‘Even then, it was … it was not … pleasant. Corporal Dines was with the first detachment to enter, the day after we took Cawnpore. It … he … it affected him very deeply and he would prefer not to talk about it. Anyway, it is not something that is easy to discuss before ladies. Especially with ladies …’

Toddy turned disappointed eyes on us, and I could see him making an inward resolve to buttonhole Corporal Dines at some future date.

‘Boy,’ Kate said sadly, ‘and wasn’t it the ladies who did the dying there?’

‘Yes, ma’am … but, but there’s no need to … to talk of it. And they’re dead now, poor ladies!’

‘Yes, they’re dead. Mrs MacGregor and I both had many friends among those women, whom we had known all our lives. It would ease us to know even the worst. There are few things harder to bear than not knowing.’ She looked directly at me as she spoke, and I felt the tiredness return to my bones and remembered all the sleepless nights and tearless days of the past weeks and thought of the many yet to come. She was right. Not knowing is the hardest thing to bear.

‘It … when it came to them at last, it must have been quick!’ Young Miles swallowed and stared down at his plate.

‘At last?’

‘Well, ma’am, there were over two hundred women and children in the
Bibighar
, and they say there were only five of the devils sent in to … to … kill them.’

‘Swords?’ went on Kate inexorably.

‘Yes, ma’am,
tulwars
. Very sharp. But … but we found the hafts of some that had been broken in the work—there in the bloody rooms.’

‘Oh, God! May they rest in peace!’ Kate sighed, and her hand went into her pocket for her rosary.

The corporal raised his head and rubbed his nose on the back of a calloused hand; then, getting to his feet, he poured more whisky for each of us. Jess, our stern Covenanter, did not demur but was the first to take a sip from her replenished mug.

‘The bairns,’ she whispered almost to herself. ‘Och! The bairns and the sights they must have seen!’

Corporal Dines sat down again and swallowed his whisky at a gulp. He looked round at the table, into questioning eyes. His face was working and there were tears in his eyes.

‘Yes’m,’ he nodded to Jessie. ‘Yes’m—and we … we seen them sights too! Afterwards and all, but we seen ’em and may Christ Himself curse me if I ever sleeps a night through and not dream of what I seen!’

We were silent. Lieutenant Miles covered his eyes with his hands as though to protect them from the lantern’s glare.

‘Bert … don’t! There’s no use …’ he muttered to his friend, but Dines straightened himself on his stool and continued.

‘First thing I seen, ma’am,’ he said hoarsely. ‘First thing I seen were a nipper—no more’n a year old, maybe—hangin’ on a meat hook between two women lashed to pillars on either side of a h’archway. Throats cut … and … and blood everywhere. All over there was blood, inches of it on the floor and the walls, and spatterin’ right up to the ceilin’. Oh, God!’

‘Hey, Bert, steady old fellow! That’s enough now. Don’t speak of it any more!’ Billy tried to pat his companion on the shoulder, but the other shrugged away, shaking his head, while tears cascaded down his grimy cheeks into his bedraggled boy’s moustache.

‘No, sir! Now I ’as to tell it. Now I’ve started, and I ’asn’t spoke of it to no one in all this time, and they want to know. I … I got to tell it. Like it was when I first seen it, sir. Since then there ’as been others as ’as seen it and spoke of it—and to me— but
I
got to tell ’ow
I
first seen it myself. Like it is in my ’ead now, sir. Just like it is in my ’ead and afore my wakin’ eyes—all the time!’

‘Let him talk, Billy,’ Kate said gently. ‘It will do him good perhaps, and as we have said already, it is better for us to know than to conjecture. Go on, Corporal, tell us what you see in your head, in your own way and in your own time.’

‘Well …’ Dines sighed and sniffed and rubbed his nose again. ‘Well, we was told off to Mr MacCrae’s detachment that mornin’ and we marches up to this ’ouse, my mate and me that is, and we stands waitin’ in the garden, wonderin’ what was up and why we was there. And first—well first, I didn’t
see
anything, see? There was this smell. This stink—all over the ’ouse it ’ung and we wonders what it is. Then Mr MacCrae goes in and after a couple of minutes ’e comes out and … well, ’e starts to throw up all over the verandah. Couldn’t stop. One of the men ’elps ’im and ’olds ’is rifle, and the rest of us that was there just waits and … wonders, like. You know? We was all quiet, no mutterin’ or grumblin’ like there always is. Very quiet, and seems like the ’ole bleedin’ awful town went quiet waitin’ for us to go in and …

‘Never ’eard nothin’ like that ’ush, ma’am. No birds. No crows nor mynas nor sparrows. Didn’t even ’ear a cart go by on the road, or a dog yelp. Then … well then, an old sergeant, a real tough old bird if ever there was one, ’e pushes in to see … curious like; but anyway it were ’is job, and when ’e comes out, ’e’s whiter’n snow and can’t speak. Just stares at us all … all of us waitin’ there in the quiet … and after a while signals with ’is ’and to us to go in … but stays outside ’iself. And there’s Mr MacCrae still pukin’ into a rosebush and groanin’ like. God! ’Ow I wish as ’ow I’d never set foot into that bleedin’ door. I ’ung back till almost the last, but then … then … I goes in, and I see that there babe … with the ’ook through its little throat, and I seen my mates standin’ around them rooms in the stink, all quiet … still quiet … like they’d never find words to tell it. Like I couldn’t neither—until now.’

He reached for the whisky bottle and all our eyes watched his shaking hand spill what remained of the liquor into his mug.

‘There was two rooms, see? Biggish, but not too big, and whitewashed and a courtyard beyond in a ’igh wall—just like lots of ’ouses you see around. It were early—no more’n eight o’clock, I reckon, but … they’d been there all night in the ’eat and so … the smell … the smell was there. And the flies; they was there too, and the only noise we ’eard was them and their blasted buzzin’. Well, at first, I just stands there with my mate, lookin’ in like, and not seein’ anythin’ clearly. Not wantin’ too neither after that nipper on the ’ook. But then I starts lookin’ around and noticin’ things. There wasn’t that many bodies in the rooms … leastways, not enough to leave all the blood, and I wonders what ’appened to the others. Then we walks in and the floor is as … slippery and sticky, like … like mud, but it were blood, and after a minute or two my mate says to me “Oh, God! Will you look at them!” And I looks where he points and I sees a row of little shoes, babies’ shoes and nippers’, all with the feet still in ’em.’

‘Lord ha’ mercy!’ sighed Jess with closed eyes.

‘Cut off at the ankles, all them tiny feet. And some of the shoes … well you could see as ’ow they’d been pretty colours—blood and all you could still see that. Some’ow … some’ow that was the worst thing I seen, them little coloured shoes with the feet in ’em. But … but then there was other things too. Legs and hands lyin’ around, see, and we begun to see other things that was left—clothin’ and ribbony bonnets lying in the blood on the floor, and books and Bibles and parasols with frills—all them things that females likes to ’ave with them wherever they be … and milk jugs and a scent bottle with a silver top and … all them sort of things. Toys too. For the nippers. But everything broken and slashed and blood on it. There was ’andmarks on the walls, ’andmarks in blood, and the walls and pillars and doors was all chipped and scarred with the sword slashes. All scarred with bloody lines. Some of ’em … some of ’em was right low down too, like as if the women ’ad been crouched down, tryin’ to escape, or maybe the children …

‘Well, we just stands there lookin’ for a while, everyone quiet, like I says, and cryin’ too … then … then someone shouts from outside—not sayin’ nothin’ mind, just a yell … like … like ’e’s been shot or somethin’. So we goes out, very careful. We don’t want to slip in that … you see, and fall into … and we comes to this well in the garden with a tree near it, and they tells us that … that it’s full of bodies, full of ’acked-up bodies. All them bodies we didn’t know what ’ad become of ’em, and they was packed there in that well—just thrown in any’ow with arms and legs and ’eads cut off … all together. I didn’t see that. I couldn’t. My mate, ’e takes a look and comes back vomitin’ just like Mr MacCrae, and I wants none of it. I wants none of it. I seen enough. And then, as I stands there under the tree, not lookin’ at that there well, I sees some funny grey stuff hangin’ from the bark of the tree, and … and it smells right bad too, and one of the others sees me lookin’ and he sez, “Brains. Children’s brains.” They must ’ave swung ’em up by their ’eels and bashed their ’eads against that tree to kill ’em.’

Corporal Dines stopped and covered his eyes with his hands.

‘Jesus!’ swore Toddy softly.

‘That’s all I seen, ma’am. I couldn’t tell of what I’d seen … couldn’t speak of it, and my mate, ’im as was there that mornin’, well ’e was wounded on the way ’ere and I ’aven’t seen ’im ’ardly since, or I could ’ave maybe spoken to ’im. But it’s a terrible sight I do carry in me ’ead now, ladies. Terrible!’

He put his head down on his arms folded on the table and the rest of us sat for a moment silently watching him.

‘Aye,’ Jessie said at last, ‘there’s nair a word a body can say. Nair a word. But, I knew them, laddie. Friends of mine were there, and their bairns. Och! May the Lord hae them in his hands the night.’

‘Jesus!’ Toddy breathed a second time.

‘Watch your tongue, wee man!’ admonished Jessie through her grief.

‘Many of their husbands, fathers, brothers, are here—with the 32nd,’ I said. ‘They … we have all been hoping against hope that what we heard was not true, that there must have been some survivors. But now I think, perhaps, it is better that there were none. To live with the memory of that …’

‘No. No survivors,’ Billy Miles said in a tired tone of voice. ‘Nothing.’

Corporal Dines got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Ma’am, beggin’ your pardon, but could I lay down and sleep somewhere? I’m … I’m that spent, I can’t ’ardly see.’

We pushed the table and stools on the verandah, dragged the thin straw-filled mattresses from our beds, and made the two men as comfortable as goodwill alone could make them on the kitchen floor. In seconds, it seemed, young Dines was asleep.

‘Thank you, Mrs Barry, Miss Hewitt.’ Billy Miles, unlike his friend, hesitated to remove his boots in the presence of ladies, and waited for us to leave the room.

‘Sure, and what can you possibly be thanking
us
for, Billy Miles? God knows it is little enough we have to give, in view of what you have done for us.’

‘Thank you for letting him talk. He … he’s a good man and a good friend. His home is in the village a stone’s throw from my grandparents’ house, where I was brought up when Mother and Father were out here. We used to lark around together when we were boys and I was home from Haileybury. When I got my commission, he joined the same regiment, and we’ve been together more or less ever since. Three days ago he saved my life in a skirmish on the way here. I think he’ll be all right now he’s talked, but at one time, after Cawnpore, I thought … I thought he might kill himself. You see … his sister … was one of the women in the house. She was married to a private in the 32nd, and … and there was a child too. That’s why I brought him here with me. I would not want anything to happen to him.’

‘Divil take my prattling old tongue!’ said Kate. ‘And me telling him I had friends among those women. As though that gave me some sort of special reason to grieve!’

‘Poor boy. Oh, poor boy!’ was all I could say.

‘He’ll be all right now, I’m sure of it. He needs a rest, a long rest.’

‘And so do you, Billy Miles. Bed down now, and may the two of you sleep in peace. Come, Laura—Jessie—let us go and leave these boys to sleep.’

It was over.

That was what our minds were full of as we prepared for bed. The siege was ended. In a few days we would be free, and even Corporal Dines’s account of the dreadful
Bibighar
was soon overlaid by the realization that at last our ordeal was concluded.

Kate, Jess and I sat long on the two string beds talking softly of the events of the day and of what must soon follow. No more waiting in unbearable anxiety that we somehow had managed to bear. No more hunger. No more constant tiredness. No more dirt, decay and smells. No more sudden horrible death. Only our griefs would go with us when we left and would grow, as time passed and memory dimmed, half-pleasuable and then be wholly forgotten as griefs are meant to be forgotten. In the next room the snores of our guests echoed thunderously as the poor fellows slept for the first time in days, and through the small square window of the bedroom came the stir and bustle of the entrenchment which, all through that long night, knew neither rest nor quiet.

The Baillie Guard stood open and through it struggled an intermittent stream of exhausted men, some singly, some in bands, and the wounded in litters and horse-drawn ambulances, the rearguard of the relief. Brigadier Inglis had sent detachments out from the Residency to reinforce the relief and guide in the stragglers, and there was so much activity that little sleep was had by any but the newcomers. Thank God it was not raining, for there was scant cover for the poor souls.