Zemindar (97 page)

‘The bugle call, Oliver?’ I protested. ‘Surely it was a signal? If not why were the cannon in readiness, or the sepoys waiting in the trees?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. Perhaps they expected treachery from us; we had arms and ammunition after all?’

‘Treachery! From a couple of hundred debilitated and wounded men such as you describe?’

‘I know; not a sensible deduction. But—what if the Nana were not entirely sure of his own men, the ones who accompanied us, I mean? Their officers were among us. Or what, and this is what truly haunts me, Kate, what if the cannon and the sepoys were there to protect us—not murder us? A … a precaution in case the Cawnpore people took it upon themselves to finish us off? The Nana, from what I heard in the entrenchment, had been most sympathetic to the British, offered much good advice which had been taken. Even that note he sent in on the first day announcing he was about to attack; it was taken as a threat, but it could have been a warning … from a man forced to it against his own will. The terms he’d made with us, too, were magnanimous.’

‘But that bugle call? What was it then?’

‘I don’t believe it was a call, a true call. If it was, then the final notes were lost in the firing. To me, it was like some stupid sepoy, a recently appointed bugler perhaps, playing with his new toy. Experimenting with it.’

We all fell silent. In the kitchen Jessie crooned to Pearl, and smoke from the fire she had lit to heat the soup drifted into the bedroom.

‘God between them and all harm, but Oliver, boy, do you really think all those lives were lost because of … of a mistake? That our shots invited, or provoked, the … rest?’

Oliver said nothing for a moment. The flickering light of the dip accentuated every furrow on his face, and in every line was bitterness.

‘I cannot be certain, Kate. I do not know enough and I suppose I never will now. But I believe it might have been due to a mistake, yes! We were all on edge. Jumpy. Remember what we had gone through in those three weeks, and many of us, most perhaps, were expecting treachery. Perhaps if we had not been allowed our guns …’

‘Oh, Oliver! That’s a terrible, terrible thought …’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. I have lived with it through these months.’

Again there was silence until I put in hesitantly, for the other two seemed absorbed in their musings, ‘What happened then, Oliver? Was that when you were wounded?’

He nodded.

‘I … I just stood there for a minute or two, aghast, not knowing what to do, not even thinking of what I should do, and something hit me. I don’t know what, perhaps the prow of another boat, or an oar. I lost my feet and fell into the water, but Mowbray Thomson and another man grabbed me and I managed to regain my feet. I hung on to their boat, it was drifting now; somehow it had come off the sandbank that had held it, and all I could do was hang on and hope for the best. I couldn’t see. My eyes were full of muddy water churned and splashed by the horses and people throwing themselves into the river; and explosions. Then I lost my feet again. The river was very shallow there, a couple of feet in depth, no more, but we must have drifted into a deeper channel, for I found I was floating and I let go one hand from the side of the boat to wipe my eyes. That was when … my arm went. I looked up just in time to see a
tulwar
descending on the arm still hanging on to the boat. It was too late to let go and dive, and the steel caught me. Slashed right down to the bone. The
sowar
could have ended me then, but somebody on the boat got him with a rifle and we all went down—the horse, the
sowar
and me, into the filthy water, bobbing with bodies now and seething with fallen flaming thatch. The noise! I cannot convey it. The sound of terror, absolute terror: screams, shouts, the human shriek of wounded horses, the
sowars
yelling “
Din! Din! Din!
” as they swept down among us, and the shots and explosions ringing out over it all. On and on the shots rang out.

‘It’s difficult to know what happened next. I must have disentangled myself somehow from the horse and the
sowar
, and surfaced. I remember someone trying to haul me aboard the boat. A boat. I don’t know whether it was the same one, though it seems likely, since apparently it was the only one that moved downstream and got away.

‘I was … in a bad way. The pain was frightful and I was half drowned to boot. No!’ He shook his head at himself. ‘That’s not right. I felt nothing at the time; the pain only started later. But I was half-drowned and choking, and suddenly I felt myself falling again, back into the river. I don’t know why my hand had been released by my would-be rescuer. Probably a bullet got him too.

‘I fainted then, I suppose. Nothing is clear after that. I seem to remember that awful screaming and crying on and off for hours, but it might have been only moments. Then for a long time I heard nothing, knew nothing.

‘It was afternoon when I came to. The sun was blazing down directly into my eyes, as I lay in the water on my back with my head and shoulders caught against some roots and driftwood that had got stuck on a sandbank. If they hadn’t been there, those roots, I’d have drifted on and drowned, I suppose; been killed certainly. As it was, I must have looked pretty dead already, not worth the bother of wading into the river to make sure of anyway. After a while I began to be aware that things had quietened down; the odd shot, some activity on the bank higher upstream, but I had floated or been dragged quite a way, and I could see nothing. I was losing a lot of blood and must have been caught up in the driftwood some time, for the shallow water around me was red. I could not stop the bleeding and, frankly, hadn’t the interest left to try, but I did attempt to ease the pain by lowering the wound into the water. I suppose I drifted off again after a while.

‘When I came round the second time, the sun was going down. I was on land; I could feel the harsh grass under my neck and cheek, and I remember wondering how in blazes I had got there. I had a cracking headache, even worse than the arm, and could only think of my thirst. Sunstroke, I suppose. I lay there for a while, trying to make things out, waiting for something to happen, and then I found I was not alone. An incredibly ancient Indian squatted on his haunches a little way from me, pulling on his
biri
contentedly, watching me. When he saw my eyes move, he beckoned and a woman appeared, and they both stood looking down at me, wondering, I suppose, what the hell was to be done with me.

‘I managed to croak, after about the third try, and the woman went away and returned with a brass pot of water.’

‘They had found you? And rescued you? Natives?’ I was frankly incredulous.

‘They had found me, rescued me and went on rescuing me. Natives!’ His tone was scathing.

‘I’m sorry, but surely, in the light of all that has happened to both of us, my surprise is natural?’

‘Hmph!’

‘What happened then?’ Kate said impatiently.

‘Well, they were on the way back to their own village after attending a wedding in some place on the far side of Cawnpore. They had a bullock-cart. They told me later they thought I was a Pathan. I was wearing the same kit I had when I set out from Hassanganj—never even washed. My beard had grown during the siege, since we had no water to shave in, and I had clung on to my turban like grim death, and damned glad I was to have it too. I used to wrap the tail around my face and tuck the end into the folds at the side to keep the smell out; it probably saved me from sunstroke a dozen times. Apparently the turban was still on my head when they found me, ducking or not. They had sat and watched me for a long time, trying to make out whether I was dead or alive. When evening came, the woman’s curiosity had got the better of her and she had waded out and pulled me ashore. And there I was. They had passed too late to hear the shooting on the river that morning; but, seeing a great many sepoys still riding and marching around, and being simple folk, had decided to hide up in a grove until nightfall. Which was why they had been able to keep an eye on me for so long.’

‘They never tried to hurt you? To give you up to the pandies?’ I was still incredulous, and basely when I remember Ungud, Ishmial, Moti and so many more.

‘They never even questioned whether I wanted to go with them, or considered the risk they were running in taking me. Just loaded me on to the cart and away we went. The village was about twenty miles this side of Cawnpore. They were the poorest of the poor: untouchables—the old man was a shoemaker and leather-worker, or had been in his good days. They had a hut some way out of the village and a scratch of land. They hid me and protected me, fed me and nursed me to the best of their ability until I left—about a week ago. Ten days?’

‘Did the other villagers know of you being there?’

‘They must have. They kept away so carefully.’

‘Glory be! But you’re being kept for hanging, lad. No doubt of that.’

‘That’s it, Kate,’ I agreed. ‘When I think of how much blood you must have lost, and the pain you were in … How did you pull through?’

‘Fever was a help. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. I don’t know whether it was some disease, sunstroke, or just the wound, but I was delirious a lot of the time to begin with and didn’t feel or remember very much. After the first few weeks, I began to worry about the damned arm, though. Could see it was useless, but it wouldn’t heal up. Kept breaking open and suppurating, and the fever kept returning too. One day I awoke from a doze to find a pariah puppy licking the pus away while I slept.’

‘Oliver! No! Ugh!’

‘Now there’s a delicately nurtured female for you,’ he commented ironically to Kate. ‘No sense! That little ring-tailed pup, with its yellow eyes and its eternal cringe, put me on my feet again. I remembered that once when I was a boy my grandmother had told me not to interfere when my pointer bitch licked an injured puppy’s bleeding cut. “She’s healing it,” my Grandmama said. “There’s something curative in a dog’s saliva.” So, well, having no other medication, I decided to give it a try. Made a point of inviting little Fido back every time I saw him. He became quite a friend.’

‘And it helped?’

‘It certainly improved. Healed quite well. Looks a mess as you can see; I suppose it should have been stitched up when it happened. But it closed after a fashion, stopped suppurating, and only opened up again when some cloddish private knocked it with a musket butt on the way here. He seems to have made a thorough job of it. Still, as you say, Kate, I am obviously being saved for hanging! And now … now, if you don’t mind, I think I would like to sleep. I think now I
can
sleep.’

Having told us his story, Oliver seldom again mentioned his experiences in Cawnpore or in the village to which his rescuers had taken him. Sometimes, perhaps, he would recall some incident too absurd or funny to keep to himself and he would recount it, smiling. More often the recollections that swam to the forefront of his mind during the days of his convalescence were unhappy, and I would find him lying back on his pillows, grinding his teeth and knuckling his eyes as though in pain, or to shut out some insistent vision too horrible to remember without a groan. Sometimes, too, he would call me in his peremptory fashion and, when I went to him, would hold my hand to his lips, eyes closed, or put my fingers over his eyes, as though their presence would in some way exorcise the devils in his mind. Then he would release me very tenderly and say gruffly, ‘Be off about your business, woman. Idling while there’s work to be done?’

For me, the small dark room where he lay was all there was of reality during those days. When I was not with Oliver, I was thinking of him, cooking some mess for him, trying to find him clothes, or talking of him to our visitors. Not unnaturally, however, our friends had other things on their minds than Oliver’s well-being and before long their anxious or despondent talk made me realize that nothing much had altered in our situation, despite the relief, and that in fact in many ways we were worse off.

For the relief had failed. Instead of being rescued from the Residency by the forces of Generals Havelock and Outram, the relievers themselves were now incarcerated with us and as completely cut off from help from the outside world as the original garrison had been before the 25th of September.

I can no longer remember what I had myself expected from the term ‘relief’. Probably something impractical, such as marching out of the entrenchment with bands playing and ranks of immaculate soldiery snapping to attention as we women passed down their precise and warlike lines. Among the men, there had always been two distinct schools of thought: there were those who had hoped for a strong force that in a few swift engagements would release us from our imprisonment, retake the city of Lucknow, and from there quell the insurrection in all of Oudh. Others, more realistic, hoped only for aid sufficient to liberate the Residency and get the dependants to safety, while the men of the Old Garrison remained on to battle for the city and await the coming of a superior force from Calcutta. The second alternative was the most popular, and at times it seemed to me that all most men needed to really enjoy a war was the absence of their female responsibilities. But perhaps my judgement, made in pique, was a little cruel. What no one had envisaged was that, having been rescued, our rescuers would then be shut up helplessly with us within the enclosure.

For General Havelock, having learned what had befallen General Wheeler’s force in Cawnpore, of the massacre at the river and the later butchering of the women, and understandably anxious that the like fate should not befall us in Lucknow, had marched to our rescue with too small an army. Of the three thousand men who had gathered in Cawnpore to come to our aid, four hundred were sick or wounded and were left behind; an additional five hundred men, together with most of the supplies and several thousand camp followers, had been left at the Alum Bagh, a palace in a large walled park, only four miles distant from us as the crow flies, but from the nature of things now inaccessible. In the close and bloody fighting in the city on the 25th and 26th of September, two hundred men of the relief had been killed and over three hundred wounded. The strength of the relieving column had thus been halved between the time they had mustered in Cawnpore and the day they entered the Baillie Guard.