by Mark Hayes
“Now Smyth, tell me, have you ever heard of Muldarin?” M asked, and for a moment I thought he might even be joking. Not that the trout faced swine had the sense of humour for anything so elaborate.
“Of course,” I replied, “but wasn’t he killed some years ago in the Madras uprising? I am sure the East India Company made quite a show of their victory over him. Didn’t they parade his body through the streets of Delhi or something?”
“Doubtless they did, but the name had been used before and will probably be used again. Muldarin is a rallying cry, Smyth, for India’s disaffected. Due to the bungling of the East India Company, the disaffected would seem to be the larger proportion of the subcontinent’s population.”
That was true enough. The Company were far from the kindest of landlords. From what I knew, Muldarin was a kind of folk hero in India. He or, at least, men bearing his name, had been fighting their little insurrections against the Raj for the last fifty years or so. Think of him as an Indian Robin Hood. At least, if Robin Hood robbed from the rich, then cut their throats, slaughtered their children, crucified their servants and raised bloody wars of insurrection, in between giving a few loose rupees to the poor.
“There is always unrest in India,” I said, which is a bit like saying there’s always tea in China, or Americans are always fond of guns. But despite myself, I was curious now.
“Indeed there is, Smyth, and most useful it is too,” M replied.
I had to check to make sure I’d heard the last correctly.
“Useful?”
“Divide and conquer, Mr Smyth. Hindu, Sikh, Muslims, and the dozens of other little sects that hold the religious hearts of the continent all have one thing and only one thing in common. Hatred of the British and the hold we have upon it. The Buddhists are none too fond of us either. Each would happily raise arms against us and evict us from our rightful dominion. But what they all hate far more is the thought of one of the others being in charge. The British presence keeps India from going the way of the dis-United States and crumbling into an array of despotic fiefdoms, and theological totalitarianisms. Something we have long averted by the preservation of the status quo. To whit our dominance and rule. The occasional insurrection puts the fear of god into the locals that they will fall under the sway of one of the other factions. Nothing binds India to the British more than the occasional mutiny of a mad Mullah, or Hindu fanatics. On occasion, we have started insurrections ourselves when the locals have not been obliging.”
I would claim to be shocked by this last revelation, but I wasn’t. Neither was Miss Wells.
“A sad indictment of my people,” she said, the melancholy in her voice lending honesty to her words. “Sadly one that is probably correct.”
“Indeed, and one that has been the undoing of Muldarin more than once. His last incarnation was as a Hindu, we believe, and it was the Sikhs who gave away his plans in Madras and brought about his downfall. That and a flight of Her Majesty’s finest airships, of course,” M said, and I felt a tad uncomfortable with the conversation while stood alongside Miss Wells.
I know all about the firebombing of Madras. Everyone did, it was almost legendary for its brutality. Indiscriminate was the word that was usually bandied about if the subject ever came up. The city and most of the countryside around it burned for weeks they said. A hundred airships dumped tar bombs over the whole area. Scorched earth was the least of it. They say the fires could be seen glowing on the horizon from Calcutta, unlikely as that was. What was well-known was that nothing and no one walked out of Madras afterwards. Few airmen I’d ever met spoke proudly of that victory. I’d met none who would ever have admitted being on those ships at the time.
Miss Wells had visibly stiffened at the mention of Madras. I can’t say I blamed her.
The British papers originally had the effrontery to call the whole fiasco a ‘weak display of our Imperial power’ because they had called for virus bombs to be used in retaliation for the atrocities Muldarin had committed. Once pictures of Madras after the bombings started to appear, the newspapers backtracked. Even the editor of The Times took a step back from his more verbose flag waving for a while. Madras was the Empire at its worst, voices in support of self-rule grew stronger on the back of it, and for a while the national collective shame of it all made it seem independence was a possibility.
Twenty years had passed under Tower Bridge since then and the Empire still had its crown jewel. All being said, it was to the good of India, at least to my British eyes. India flourished, or so I was always told. But even so, few Englishmen would be willing to look an Indian in the face and say the word Madras. I certainly wouldn’t for one…
I had little time to reflect on all this as M pushed on with the briefing.
“Be that as it may, the name Muldarin is mentioned once more on the lips of rabble rousers on the sub-continent. Which would normally be a worry for our friends in the MOD and the India office. But other matters are delicate right now, and we suspect there is more to this than some Hindu warlord. Indeed, we suspect that the man behind this latest incarnation is not Indian at all but someone else entirely. If it proves to be whom we believe it to be, bigger issues are at stake. Which is why we are sending you, Mr Smyth. We want you to find a way to join him.”
“What? Are you serious?” I said with entirely genuine surprise. It sounded a damn fool idea to me.
“Quite serious, my dear boy, quite serious,” M replied, holding up an old photograph to the camera. It was an ancient looking sepia thing which must have dated back a hundred years or more. “We believe this man is behind the resurfacing of Muldarin’s name in northern India and that his designs are not the foolish idea of India liberty but to bring about the downfall of the Empire itself.”
To say I was surprised by this revelation is an understatement. Shocked would be closer to the mark. Stirring up rebellion in the powder keg of India was one thing, but bringing down the Empire… that was unthinkable. The British Empire would outlast the sun, as I’m sure every Englishman would agree. As a concept, it was almost laughable.
I found myself peering at the photograph, oddly fascinated by it. It was the image of an unassuming man in his mid-thirties with a neatly cut moustache, trimmed wavy hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. A man who looked born to be either a civil servant or a country vet. A man to bring down the greatest empire the world had ever known he wasn’t. More a mouse of a man, a meek, mild mouse at that. A bank manager’s lackey, or a clerk in some minor local government office perhaps. What he didn’t look like was a rabble-rousing rebel who could set India alight.
Looks may be deceiving, but they ain’t that deceiving…
“Who the hell is he?” I asked, speaking my thoughts aloud as much as asking.
“Herbert George Wells,” said Miss Wells, her voice lacking its normal caustic tone. “My great-grandfather.”
I looked at her, bemused. This was all swiftly getting more ridiculous. To be her great-grandfather, he would be over a hundred. Though judging by the age of the photograph that would be a liberal estimate. Yet something about the name, beyond his connection to my Miss Wells, rang a bell with me. Though I couldn’t say why exactly, at least until M expanded a little on the man in question.
“Indeed, Miss Wells’s great-grandfather, and the reason she is also in our employ. A fatuous writer of fictions who once garnered some little fame amongst pseudo-intellectuals and idle dreamers. Before he spent some time serving in Her Majesty’s government as an advisor in the late 1800s. Until his philosophies ceased to be in tune with those of the crown,” M told me, while the granddaughter in question had a look of quiet fury about her. I found myself wondering why she was working with The Ministry. A suspicion that she might have little choice in the matter began to form in the back of my mind.
“You mean when he decided helping the British Empire grow ever stronger was an error,” she said, pleasantly enough. If there was venom to her words, she hid it well.
“Ind
eed, a mistaken belief on his part, I assure you. The Empire holds the world together. Indeed he helped make it so. As such my predecessors allowed him to retire with grace and disappear. But then we all make mistakes, do we not, Miss Wells?”
She scowled at the image in the porthole screen but declined to rise to whatever bait was being dangled in front of her. M looked pleased with her reaction regardless. Ever one to goad a subordinate when he had the chance. Whatever mistake lay in her past, it was a barb he took delight in throwing her way.
“This is the last picture we have on file, and as you can see, it was taken some time ago. We are, however, currently given to believe he has resurfaced in northern India. Given the nature of his previous services to the crown, we need to know what he is up to. Which is where you come into all this, Mr Smyth.”
“Hang on how old is that picture? It looks…?”
“It was taken in 1915 at the Franco-Prussian accord conference in Berlin. He was part of the crown’s diplomatic oversight commission,” M said blandly as if he was talking about events that happened only recently.
“Then he must be almost as old as Queen Vic?” I said, knowing full well that was improbable.
British science may have kept Iron Knickers young for a couple of hundred years, but no one quite knew how. At least no one who had not signed the official secrets act in the blood of their first born. While I am not a ‘Cult of Reginis’ nut job like half the Church of England seem to be these days, it’s hard to argue with their belief it was a sign of her blessed nature.
Mainly, it’s true, because if you did argue with them, they might have you arrested under archaic blasphemy laws and try to stone you to death.
My old mum was a bit of a believer, truth be told, so on the occasions she was sober enough, which weren’t very prevalent, she would try to explain to me how ‘Blessed Victoria’ was a true link between the people of the Empire and God. Hobbs Leviathan made flesh, a head of state that sat truly at the right hand of God. Not that my old mum would know Hobbs if he was selling her gin. But she was fond of the hymn singing, and the idea of redemption, just as long as it didn’t impinge on her ability to buy gin.
In one of her more devout phases, she would occasionally drag me along to their coffee mornings which tended towards the fanatical, and the less said about the church fetes, the better. But for all their fervent fanaticism it was easy to believe that they might have a point.
Old Clockwork Knickers’s unnaturally long life had indeed held the Empire together. Without her it may have fallen much like the United States did in the thirties. She was the core foundation around which the state was built and while the CofE’s fanaticisms left me cold, I would’ve been the first to agree that it had at least spared us the elevation of the last dozen or so Princes of Wales. Which was a mercy.
Chinless inbreeds the lot of them.
But I digress, and M seemed keen to move the conversation on, regardless of my incredulity.
“Indeed, Smyth, but that is of little note. What is important is that we must discover what he is up to now. He is in a unique position to be a danger to all, so we must discover his plans in order that steps can be taken. You are uniquely placed to gain his confidence, we believe, so that is your task. Find him, find out his plans, and we will take whatever steps are necessary at that juncture, no matter how regrettable they may be.”
“Why me?” I asked, which was, as it ever is, a pointless question, but one always asks it in situations like these. Though I will admit, one has seldom found one’s self in situations quite like these.
Unsurprisingly M ignored my question.
“The details of your assignment are in the documents before you, Mr Smyth,” he instructed. “It goes without saying that we will be watching you and England expects you to do your duty. Miss Wells will help you with the details. She has her own investment in this enterprise. The documents do not leave this room. You can return to your ship once you have digested the details. Now be about your business, I have other matters to attend to, good day.”
And with that, the screen went blank.
“This is insane,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud.
Miss Wells just shrugged and stared up at the multiple screens of the array. She seemed to be looking for something.
“Indeed, but then when is anything the British do sane?” she replied after a few moments.
Despite everything, I chafed slightly at that comment. But I could hardly blame her for her bitterness. I let it slide by and started to leaf through the papers.
I found myself once again wondering while I did so what hold The Ministry had over Miss Wells. She obviously had little love for the Empire given all the little digs about it she’d imparted. If this H.G. character was indeed her great-grandfather, that could skew things either way. Relations within a family can be as complex as international affairs, just as illogical and just as damn bloody come to that. Regardless, it struck me strange she would be willingly working for The Ministry.
Against them possibly…
Of all the questions I had buzzing around my head, as I tried to find some kind of logic to the papers before me, that question of Miss Wells’s involvement in all this was the one that kept occurring to me.
And yes, I have to admit that had she been less attractive I may have cared far less. I wouldn’t claim to be proud of that, but it is the truth. Why I feel the need to burden you, dear reader, with such truths, well sometimes a man just needs to be honest about such things. To himself, if no one else, and in this, you are my conscience. We all have to divest some of our guilt once in a while, but perhaps I say too much for now.
In any regard, I found it hard to focus on the papers before me as the question burned at me, so a few minutes later I just plain asked her why.
She stared back at me for a while. I guess she had no great inclination to trust me with her confidence. Then she turned back to the screens and said nothing for a while. Then she pointed and said, “Look at the screens, Mr Smyth. Tell me, what do you see?”
I put the papers I was failing to read aside, looked up and followed her direction. She was pointing towards the screen relaying the spider’s view through my eye. I saw my reflection on the surface of the screen become a double image like before, as was the reflection of Miss Wells. She moved her finger, and I followed it to a second screen next to my own. The image it showed was much the same. Same double image from the reflections on the glass. Same view of the array from where we stood. For a second it struck me as odd. Why would they feed the same image through two screens? Why duplicate the feed from my eye, when all the other screens showed different views?
Yes, I know…
In my defence, it had been a long few days, with intermittent bouts of blackness that had nothing to do with sleep. I was not thinking my clearest.
‘Two screens, oh,’ I realised somewhat slowly and closed my left eye, watching one of them go dark as I did so, while the other turned to look at me from the side. In itself, that’s very strange, to see yourself as others see you.
I opened my left eye once more and turned to look at her, watching with horrified fascination as she placed a finger on her lower eyelid and pulled it down so I could see a glimmer of metal where only her whites should have been.
Her dislike of William Gates all made sense now.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
The Jewel In The Crown
According to the guidebooks, ‘Company House in Calcutta is perhaps the greatest symbol of British rule over the subcontinent. A sight that puts pride in the heart of any true Englishman, and the fear of God in all who stand opposed to the Empire.’
‘God’, as such sentiments are intended to infer, is, of course, an Englishman. Upon seeing the three hundred foot triumphal arch that houses the cogwheels of British rule that is Company House, it is a ‘sentiment that you’re hard-pressed to counter’, as the guidebook put it. I found myself thinking much the same as I rushed towards it on the express
line across the river Hooghly.
The arch, covered in bas-reliefs of Imperial pride, Union Jacks, lions and old Britannia herself resplendent, dominates the city, much as the Empire dominates India. The whole gargantuan edifice sits in the centre of Victoria Square, the flagstones of which are laid out to depict a map of the subcontinent itself.
The designers of the Square weren’t going for subtlety. But this was after all Imperial India’s heart. They no doubt considered that it did no harm to hammer home the message of just who was in charge, not that there could be doubt on that score. The Union Jack flew everywhere in the Indian capital. Rumour had it there were more statues to be found in the city of good old ‘far from a virgin’ Queen Vic than Vishnu. Though some wags have been known to argue it’s hard to tell the difference between them…
On seeing the great arch looming towards me, as the express flew across the viaduct, I was reminded of something Miss Wells had vouched safe to me only the day before when I mentioned my orders were to report to an office within the arch. “It couldn’t be more phallic if they shaped it as a damn phallus…” She wasn’t far from the mark.
It was amidst one of her more scathing commentaries, one she made while we enjoyed afternoon tea on the flight from Egypt. Delightful though I found Miss Wells’s company on the second leg of my journey to India, her opinions on British rule in India were much what one comes to expect from the beneficiaries of Imperial largess. Which is to say, she was of the opinion that India should rule itself, and the British should depart, as it were, in a vulgar fashion. Though her language was never less than ladylike.
For myself, however, I must admit to marvelling at the sight of it as I rode the train in from the airfield. The arch cast against the vista of the city as I passed over. The closer we came to it the more the symbols of India’s wealth were there to be seen. If India is, as so often claimed, the jewel in the Empire’s crown, then Calcutta is the centre of that jewel, and it sparkles. At its heart, it is a city of mansions built with Company money.