The Tigress of Mysore

by Allan Mallinson

  He rode at the very rear, as usual, better to observe – to admire – and with a party ‘by invitation’: the adjutant, naturally; the serjeant-major, without question; his covering serjeant, of course; and the major, though as a rule his second in command took the opportunity to ride freely and see the troop captains in the saddle. Major Garratt, a bachelor in the later part of the fifth decade of his life, had come to the Sixth on exchange from the Ninety-fifth (or the Rifle Brigade, as now they preferred). Hervey had been only too glad at last to have a man he could rely on in that post – shrewd, economical, efficient, not too active as to disconcert the captains, yet with a sure touch when tranquillity looked threatened; a bachelor content with a little soldiering, the pleasures of the table (including cards) – and sport. For to the sportsman, India was without peer: the tiger in the jungle, the great mahseer in the river, the wily snipe on the jheels (marshes), the strong-winged duck, the jinking pig … ‘Everything that is necessary, and nothing that is not’ was Major Garratt’s motto, and of the Rifles, he said; and Hervey had told him it might equally be the Sixth’s – what constituting ‘necessary’ being the opinion of the senior officer present, of course. And Garratt had laughed in a way that had reassured him. How, indeed, could it be otherwise when both had been at Waterloo – the only officers, now, saving Collins, at regimental duty. And when they’d marched into Coorg with Hervey at the head of the field force, Garratt had taken Hervey’s place at the head of the regiment, exercised command admirably and then handed it back without the slightest resentment. Yes, he liked to give the impression of being the footiest of men around horses, but Hervey thought it a ploy, for he’d never seen him dismount involuntarily – and they’d taken some monstrous wide nullahs – dry watercourses – these past months in pursuit of pig – and Garratt’s charger was not of a forgiving stamp. Indeed, it was the opinion of the Waterloo sweats in the serjeants’ and the corporals’ messes (few that they were, too) that the regiment had not been so godly and quietly governed since that day on the ridge of Mont St Jean, when Lord George Irvine had been the lieutenant-colonel, and Joseph Edmonds his major. And it pleased Hervey – these things always reached the ear of a commanding officer if the regimental staff and his body-men were of the right stuff – for he’d had his share of the opposite.

  That said, he was of the opinion that tranquillity, before too long, was inimical to cavalry discipline (and quite possibly to that of the infantry as well); the dragoons would be pining soon enough for a little action.

  ‘How was your sport last night, Colonel?’ asked Garratt as they settled into a rising trot.

  ‘Agreeable, most agreeable; though a modest bag perhaps – a couple of brace of sprigtail, a few egrets, a teal … oh, and a python. You should have come.’

  ‘I should. The entertainment at the Bodyguard’s mess was more than I expected.’

  Hervey thought it best not to enquire. The Governor’s Bodyguard had some fearsome customs. ‘Fairbrother here got the teal, I should add – fast and high. There were no snipe, though, so you might have been disappointed.’ (The major had soon established himself as the best shot of all the officers – and had even beaten Serjeant Acton at the regimental sports.)

  ‘We did account for several thousand mosquitoes too,’ added Fairbrother.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hervey, frowning. ‘Corporal Johnson swore more than the army in Flanders.’

  His attention, though, returned to Georgiana. It was not unusual for wives to accompany Wednesday exercise – Hervey’s only stipulation being that they were not to ride with parasols – but Georgiana was the only female this morning save for Annie, who was riding with them for the first time.

  Annie sat well, chatting easily with the riding-master, under whose instruction she’d been coaxed into the side-saddle. Georgiana, too, rode aside, chatting equally easily with the syce who was meant to be her pilot but who’d evidently concluded that his lead rein was redundant. Georgiana had protested that breeches were more suitable here, just as on the Plain in Wiltshire, but Hervey had no intention of presenting her legs for the contemplation of anyone, let alone the entire regiment. She’d been here but a fortnight, and he was still not accustomed to the change since last he’d seen her. It was a change he knew he ought to have expected, but he’d left her in England a child, and now in Madras she was … on the threshold of being a young woman. Youth notwith-standing, she’d be seen as ‘a new-arrived angel’, as the saying went. Indeed, for that very reason he’d not really approved of her coming to India, though it was delightful at last to have her company, for to all intents and purposes she’d been his sister’s ward these past dozen years. But she couldn’t stay here long; of that he was sure. She would need to find a husband – and a good match at that. She was not without connections after all: Henrietta, her mother, had been ward of the Marquess of Bath; Elizabeth, her aunt, was now a baroness (albeit the title German) – and he himself was not entirely without account. She should be presented at court, dances arranged, introductions made …

  No, India was not the place for Georgiana Hervey.

  And yet … ‘The deuce, St Alban; she natters away like an old Company hand!’

  ‘So I observe, Colonel. And that minds me: before parade I learned that the moonshee’s chowkidar’s become agitated by his absence. It seems he’d told him he’d return within four moons, and it’s now gone six.’

  Hervey shrugged. ‘Well, it must have been a great tamasha, his daughter’s wedding, but I do think he might have sent word … At any rate, Baboo-syce yonder renders service, though what his grammar is I can’t imagine.’

  ‘It cannot be worse than mine, I’m sure,’ said St Alban, and not without some despair. ‘I confess I feel the want of the moonshee’s instruction.’ (It was curious, Hervey observed, how a man so evidently well-schooled in Latin and Greek should find the Hindoostanee such a trial.) ‘It seems the chowkidar fears something untoward has happened. He says the moonshee wouldn’t have left so much business unattended.’

  Hervey sighed. ‘Anything’s possible in this country, don’t we know. I doubt we can do anything before we receive word, though. I expect he’ll turn up in a day or so, full of stories, and a fuller purse than he left with. A good man, Bunda Ali, but …’

  He lapsed into contemplation of Georgiana again, and St Alban decided to change rein.

  ‘Were you in Jamaica long, Captain Fairbrother?’

  It had been three years and more since Fairbrother had ridden with the regiment – in the Low Countries during the unhappy affair of the Belgian rising – and St Alban supposed that much of that time had been spent at sea.

  ‘Six months or thereabout. Not long enough to be wholly re-acquainted, but enough to see the change that Abolition will bring. It’ll not be without its vexations.’

  ‘How so, exactly, sir?’

  St Alban, his family having no stock in sugar, was wont to see the Abolition Act, lately passed, as being a measure like Reform – a matter of liberal sensibility and nothing else. The owners were to receive handsome compensation after all.

  ‘Simply put, Mr St Alban, the price of sugar may rise beyond what its consumers are willing to pay. The labour is extensive.’ He said it with the detachment that was perhaps only acquired by the son of a slave who was himself – now, at least, with the death of his father, a planter – the owner of slaves. Or rather, now that the Act was passed, the former owner. He would be eternally grateful that he’d missed the late revolt, whose violence – of both slaves and the militia that suppressed the rising – sickened him.

  St Alban nodded thoughtfully. ‘That would indeed be a calamity, so many dispossessed suddenly and with no alternative means.’

  Fairbrother smiled. ‘You remain a man of humane but practical sensibility, Mr St Alban. India has not hardened your heart, evidently.’

  Hervey’s ears pricked, having contemplated the marriage stakes for long enough. ‘Captain Fairbrother has a scheme to reduce the cost of production.
’

  ‘Indeed, Colonel?’ St Alban was all attention. Schemes of improvement, anywhere, were always his delight.

  ‘And one to appeal to your Whiggish notions of progress.’

  ‘That I cannot promise,’ said Fairbrother, knowing that some thought the Whig party’s motive in Reform was merely to replace the divine right of kings with the divine right of Whigs. ‘But I believe the future in all things to lie with steam. Have you seen an iron-rail road, Mr St Alban?’

  ‘I have not, but I am certain of their capability.’

  ‘On passage to England from Jamaica my ship put in at Kingstown, and I was able to see the railway just built to Dublin, all of six miles. Wholly remarkable. There’s to be a railway-train from both ends each day, every half-hour from six in the morning until a half before midnight, some of them carrying mail bags for the English packets. I am urging my brother, and fellow planters, to consider such a scheme for the conveyance of sugar.’

  ‘And is there coal for the engines in Jamaica?’

  ‘There is not, but there’s wood aplenty – the very name “Jamaica” means “wood and water” – and coal may be brought from England, I suppose. I came here by steamer from Suez, Mr St Alban, and there’s no coal in Araby.’

  ‘Nor wood, I think. Camel dung perhaps?’

  Fairbrother glanced at him keenly (though he knew St Alban wasn’t given to mock, certainly not a man his senior in everything but title). ‘They port coal across the desert – that much I know. Is there coal here?’

  St Alban hesitated. ‘I’m shamed to say I don’t know, Captain Fairbrother. Colonel, do you suppose there is coal here?’

  Hervey’s attention had once again wandered. ‘What? Coal?’

  ‘Is there coal in India, Colonel?’

  ‘I should imagine so, yes. I think they dig it out in Bengal somewhere.’

  St Alban was now thoroughly animated by the intelligence of the steam route through Arabia, not least because one day soon he would take passage home – though not without some regrets – and he saw no merit in spending more time at sea than was strictly necessary.

  He pressed him: ‘Was the Red Sea way greatly faster, sir?’

  ‘The passage was ten weeks. It would have been nine had we not had to put in near Mecca for repairs. Yours was … what, twenty?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘And I am very glad you hastened,’ said Hervey, not wishing to hear again the details of Fairbrother’s ‘flight from Egypt’. His particular friend had been in Madras for three weeks, and his adventures in the footsteps of Moses (as it seemed) had delighted everyone he’d met – Somervile especially, whose plan it was to have a steamship ply between Fort St George and Suez. (The governor was especially pleased to have beaten Bombay to it, and more so to have persuaded Fort William to bear half the cost and engage a paddler of their own to take on packets and passengers to Calcutta.)

  Hervey had scarcely been so glad as when Fairbrother had arrived that afternoon, soaked to the skin by the refreshing south-west monsoon, yet looking just like a hidalgo – a man of rank in the Peninsula. Hervey’s own circumstances had been transformed since they’d seen each other last, when, as the saying went, he lived unaccompanied. For now Kezia was in residence. And not merely in residence, but in evident contentment. Would his good, dear friend, with whom he’d shared so much these past years, quickly tire of the new arrangements? He profoundly hoped not. But he’d do well to find him some proper occupation, for although Fairbrother was not one actively to seek work, he did – if not always recognizing it – grow weary of its absence after not very long. He still had his rank on the half-pay of the late Royal Africans, which had proved handy in more than one adventure, but here in Madras it might not be so esteemed. Might he enjoy some commission from the Company?

  They’d been riding for an hour when they reached the furthest point of the exercise, beyond the narrow isthmus between the Nungambakkam Tank and the Cooum River. Here they would debouch onto the plain of Chinglepoot, turning south to skirt the Long Tank and thence back to the lines. And here they’d have a bit of a canter, though that would depend on the dust – it could be the very devil, even at this time of year – and jump a ditch or two. But this morning Hervey would forgo the pleasure, judging it time to turn for the horse ferry across the Cooum and to make for the Fort. The general-officer-commanding had leave of absence, and as a brevet colonel Hervey stood in his place (until, he supposed, in an emergency one or other of the outlying major-generals was summoned). It was largely the work of administration, and principally of military justice, but three times a week the governor (or, strictly, in the interregnum, the pro-governor) held what he was amused to call his ‘chambers’. Hervey enjoyed the occasion, for St Alban and the rest of the regimental staff were so efficient as to leave little to detain him at office and orderly room, and the major’s eye was ever reassuring too.

  He’d been in command now for three years; he could exercise that command with a longer rein.

  ‘View Halloo!’

  It echoed down the column like a regular order.

  Hervey stood in the stirrups to see. ‘A fine hog! A sanglier, I think … No, there goes another.’

  A second boar burst from a tamarisk thicket thirty yards to the left of the leading troop. Off at once went C Troop’s cornets, and then two from the following troop.

  ‘May I go too, sir?’

  Hervey smiled to himself – Diana venatrix. And Georgiana had the sensibility too not to call him ‘Papa’ in front of his officers, nor yet to presume the dragoons’ prerogative of ‘Colonel’.

  ‘Very well,’ he nodded, turning to St Alban. ‘Make sure she—’

  ‘Of course, Colonel.’

  He was off before Hervey had needed to say.

  He’d turned away as the ‘hunt’ began, with just Acton, Corporal Johnson and Fairbrother. Somervile had asked that he bring his friend, as he wanted to speak with him a little more about his passage out. He’d had word from Fort William that the governor-general had a mind to speed further the steam route via a system of fast posting across the desert from Suez to Cairo, where a paddler on the Nile already plied back and forth to Mahmoudia, and barges on the sweetwater canal thence to Alexandria. The Admiralty had for some years maintained a weekly packet service from Alexandria to London, and a relay across the desert would undoubtedly better expedite the whole enterprise of government as His Majesty’s ministers envisaged by the new India Act. For Somervile, too, old India-hand that he was, embraced progress.

  They reached Fort St George just before nine. ‘Time, I think, for some of Ram Kumar’s coffee and ’ki,’ said Hervey. ‘The best in Madras.’

  ‘I’d be pleased by even the moderately good, for my bearer made a very indifferent breakfast,’ replied Fairbrother, handing his reins to one of the syces who’d doubled from the guardhouse.

  ‘Then we must find you a better bearer. Or else you might reconsider the invitation to lodge with us.’

  Fairbrother shook his head. ‘You keep very early hours.’

  ‘That is true,’ replied Hervey, with a wry smile, ‘but we keep late ones too. It’s remarkable what India does for the constitution – inasmuch as fauna and infirmities permit.’

  The syces led away the horses. They’d get a drink, a good rub down, some corn, and a few hours’ rest, but Fairbrother’s looked a shade tucked up.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Hervey assured him. ‘These mares can bear it. And these fellows could rub a dead horse to life.’

  In the two years the regiment had been in Madras, Hervey had re-horsed half with ‘New South Walers’, as the riding-master called them. A dozen or so years before, the Madras cavalry board had turned down the remounts that the Bengal studs were sending them, and looked south instead. It was a prodigious journey from Australia, but only half that from England, where they might otherwise have found the improving blood (for there was only so much the Arab could do with the native breeds). His own charger, M
innie (her stable name; she was entered as Minenhle – in the language of the Zulu ‘beautiful day’), was a three-quarter-bred, foaled at the Cape and brought to Madras as a two-year-old, turned away for eighteen months and then broken. She was rising ten now, and could outpace all but the full bloods. She’d strolled off with the syce as if the exercise had been nothing. Hervey reckoned that the regiment was at last, as they said of plants, ‘acclimatized’ – men and horses. Blooded, too, in the late affair at Coorg.

  The question was, however, what use would there be made of them? What time would be left to make profit of their acclimatization and blooding now that the new Act turned the East India Company into administrators rather than merchant adventurers?

  But there was no profit in excessive thought for the morrow, as Somervile was fond of saying; ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ For the moment, he would enjoy the simple pleasures of this fierce and fickle land. He sipped his Arabica and crunched the chikki – how complementary were the tastes, bitter and sweet – and was gratified to see that Fairbrother appeared to think the same.

  ‘Eppotum nallatu, Ram Kumar.’

  ‘Nanri, sahib.’

  Indeed, the coffee was so good he would ask for more; but suddenly from a window high on the other side of the courtyard came Somervile’s habitual ‘Salaam!’

  Hervey smiled. ‘The pro-governor does not stand on ceremony, as you see.’

  This Fairbrother knew well from the Cape, when Somervile had nearly met his end – at least once – by excess of enthusiasm. But it had been some years, and he looked forward to more of his company again, elevated though it now was. Not least if he were truly an advocate of steam.