Steam, however, wasn’t the governor’s preoccupation this morning. All had changed with the arrival the evening before of a Company messenger from Fort William.
He welcomed them to the workaday rooms whence the presidency was governed, introduced his secretary to Fairbrother (a handsome way round, thought Hervey), poured them marsala and then sat down in the emphatic way he had when pleased with what he was about to impart.
‘Well then, gentlemen: what do you know of thuggee?’
Hervey was well used to Somervile’s interrogatory way of proceeding, though it was not his own. Nevertheless, he was in spirits enough to humour him. ‘Do we speak of a proper or an abstract noun?’
‘Abstract.’
‘Frankly, I know neither proper nor abstract.’
‘Captain Fairbrother, you look knowing, sir.’
‘I met a Bengal collector on the packet out returning from home leave. He said his district was plagued by dacoits, of whom the worst belonged to a secret society which murdered any and all, whether necessary or not, and that these were known as phansigars, or sometimes thugs.’
Somervile beamed. ‘Then my purpose is made so much easier. That, indeed, appears to be the essence of thuggee. And your collector will, by all accounts, find the situation in his district not in the least improved on his return.’
‘He said he believed it would soon disturb Madras – the Northern Circars,’ added Fairbrother.
‘His reason?’
‘That the authorities were quite unable to bring any of the thugs to justice for want of intelligence, so there was no impediment to their increase. Also that some of the nabobs must be party to it.’
‘Hah! That is the material point,’ said Somervile, turning to Hervey. ‘The service believes this to be so.’
Hervey inclined his head, as if to say he was not surprised.
Somervile turned back to Fairbrother. ‘I should explain, sir, by “service” I mean the Political Service. You are acquainted with its purpose?’
‘I am not, Sir Eyre, but shall be happy to be so.’
‘Most of the princely states – the greater ones at least – have a Resident, an ambassador of the Company, though his functions are considerably greater than merely embassy. It is a form of indirect rule, the object being the maintenance of peace, which was desirable in itself when the Company was principally engaged in trade but which now, since the new Act, is essential to the exercise of government. The service consists of officers drawn largely from the military, but also from the best of the Company’s writers.’
‘Admirable.’
‘I confess a high regard for them … Well now, there’s a political making his way here presently on instructions from Fort William. I should be much obliged, Captain Fairbrother, if you would lend an ear to our discussions.’
Fairbrother, having supposed their mutual interest lay in pistons and cylinders, was quite taken aback. ‘I … should be delighted, Sir Eyre, though to what end my ear may be of use is quite beyond me.’
Hervey already had his suspicions.
IV
The Ways of Nature
That afternoon
‘Why, Miss Gildea, whatever is the matter?’
Tears filled Annie’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. She made to rise as Georgiana came in.
‘No, please don’t get up. Whatever can have caused you to cry so?’
Georgiana pulled up a chair and sat beside her. The nursery was quiet at this time. The infant Hervey slept, Allegra took her afternoon rest, and the work of the servants ceased for an hour or so. Annie herself used the time to read, or to write her diary or a letter home.
‘Oh, Miss Hervey, it’s my brother. He is dead.’
Georgiana took her hand. ‘Annie, I’m so sorry— Oh, forgive me: Miss Gildea. Your brother here in India? How so?’
‘Yes; I have no other.’ Annie reached for the letter she’d not long laid aside on the little table next to her chair. ‘I wrote to him three months ago – it went with the post from the Fort – and today there came this from his captain.’ She handed it to her:
The Infantry Barracks,
Agra,
September 23rd 1834
Dear Madam,
I much regret to have to inform you of the death of your brother Private Thomas Gildea, who departed this life on July 6th after being seized by an illness. He was buried with military honours in the garrison cemetery, and his grave marked by a stone of regimental pattern. His personal effects were sent to his father in England together with a sum of money raised by sale of his necessaries and perishables among his comrades, as is the custom.
I may tell you that your brother was held in high regard by his officers. All in the company feel keenly his loss.
I am so very sorry to have to convey this news to you. If there be anything further that I may tell you for your comfort then I beg you only to inquire.
I am, madam, your obedient servant,
Robert Pattisson,
Captain, No. 3 Company,
13th (1st Somersetshire) Regiment (Light Infantry)
‘It is indeed a sad letter, but a handsome one too,’ said Georgiana, giving it her back.
‘It is, Miss Hervey, but I wish I might know what was his illness. Perhaps his captain wishes to spare me distress, but I’m sure I’ll keep thinking on what it may have been.’
‘I pray you don’t. His suffering, whatever suffering there was, is at an end. He is with God, and he would not wish you in anguish.’
Annie nodded, and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. She folded the letter, put it aside and stood up in a determined way, brushing the creases from her skirt. ‘I must make ready for Miss Allegra’s walk.’
‘Of course. I would come with you, but my lesson with the baboo …’
Annie smiled. ‘I wish Bunda Ali were back. He is so fine a teacher. It is strange there is no word.’
Georgiana had heard the same, oft repeated – a fine teacher, and a good man. ‘My father says that if he is not come by the end of the month he will have a notice sent to the Resident in Haidarabad to enquire his whereabouts. He believes it not unlikely that the Nizam – don’t you think that title quaint? – has enticed him to join his court, his knowing so much about the military here, and being of the same religion as the Nizam.’
‘To do us harm? Oh, I think not, Miss Hervey. Surely not. He gave me lessons too, though he need not have, for I am of no consequence.’
Georgiana clasped her hand again. ‘Oh, dearest Miss Gildea, you are of the greatest consequence to me, and to my father – and to my step-mother too!’
Annie thought for a moment. ‘Miss Hervey, please say nothing of this to your father, or to Mrs Hervey. I would not want to disturb them in any way.’
Georgiana was all surprise. ‘Why, Miss Gildea, my father and step-mother alike would surely wish to know of your loss, to condole with you and offer what comfort they may. You are as family!’
Annie shook her head. ‘No, Miss Hervey, if you please. I appreciate that sentiment, and no doubt you are right, but I have my reasons, and would wish, if at all, to tell them in my own time.’
Georgiana smiled warmly. ‘Of course, of course. Forgive my presumption.’
‘There is nothing to forgive, Miss Hervey. You are all kindness … And now there is work to be done.’
* * *
Hervey had returned to the lines just after stand-down at one o’clock. Second parade – which was always the preserve of the troop serjeant-majors – would follow in two hours, and then perhaps a little recreation. Afternoon was not as a rule a time for the commanding officer to be at office or even abroad, except in plain clothes, but as he didn’t eat in the middle of the day save for a little fruit, he liked to keep ‘open office’ for an hour so that any of the regimental staff might have a word less formally.
The orderly room was otherwise a place of silence, even repose, the major asleep in his chair and no sign of St Alban or the chief clerk.
Sammy, however, by some process that passed all understanding, stood ready with a tray of hot coffee as if he knew that the colonel-sahib would appear at this precise moment. There was, Hervey had long supposed, a means of communication among the native servants and vendors that they, the gora log, the white people, would never comprehend.
‘Nanri, Sammy,’ he said simply.
Sammy returned the smile broadly.
‘But two cups? Irantu kap?’
‘Yes, Colonel-sahib. Daktar wait.’
The surgeon appeared from the defaulters’ room.
Hervey smiled still more widely. ‘It is ever good to see you, Milne. But with tidings of joy, I trust?’ He could say it with good cheer, for the morning ‘states’ said the regiment was in sound enough health.
‘I wasn’t able to attend your parade, Colonel, for I was called away. I thought I should report in person. Forgive my rather dusty attire.’
There was none whose company Hervey found more agreeably rewarding than Surgeon Milne’s. In a regiment, it was said, one gentleman subordinate to another, the senior never mentioned it, and the junior never forgot it. The surgeon – a physician, indeed, formerly of some standing in Aberdeen – was Hervey’s subordinate, but in his professional calling he was without rank (Hervey himself had joked that he was ‘peerless’). This alone, in a society in which rank was of the essence, made his company welcome; otherwise it was forever a business of talking upwards or downwards. But it was more than just professional relief: Milne had saved Kezia from the ‘puerperal melancholy’, nursing her back to health after her collapse three years before.
‘I’m just come from the Fort, and Sammy has brought us coffee. Sit you down.’
Milne took his coffee and sat in the gilded chair taken booty from the palace in Coorg, while Hervey settled into his green plush the other side of the writing table.
‘Cholera in one of the villages beyond the Nungambakkam Tank. Francis, the senior medical officer, took me to see. Not a pretty sight. Nor smell indeed. But it’s a native matter. It shouldn’t enter the lines. We did what we could.’
Hervey grimaced. There were few things that could be of greater concern to a commander of men than cholera nearby, even if the other side of the Nungambakkam water. ‘We’ll not need sulphur pots then?’
Milne shook his head. ‘But I’ve told Collins to make ready. It would be well to exercise south of the Nungambakkam meanwhile.’
Hervey nodded. ‘Is that the worst of it?’
‘Two deaths from snakebite in the native lines, and a third indirectly. One of them – one of the grass-cutters – this morning, in just three hours.’
Hervey shook his head. There was no escaping it in India, no matter where, or how exalted – as the encounter with Allegra in the stillroom had (almost) proved. But three hours … ‘One of Corporal Johnson’s “good” snakes, evidently.’
‘Colonel?’
‘He’d heard it somewhere: “the good ones kill quickly, the bad ones take days.” Who were the other two?’
‘A most intriguing case, a woman and child found dead this morning on their charpoy by the husband, a chowkidar returned from watch. We couldn’t at first fathom why she’d died, nor the child, till we found two puncture wounds to the ankle, so small as to want a glass to see them. She must have been bitten while she slept; probably didn’t even realize, then passed the poison in her milk sometime in the early hours. The child hadn’t been dead long.’
Hervey shook his head again. A mother poisoning her own child – of all the ways that Nature inflicted death in this country … ‘I confess I shudder each time I think of Allegra’s brush with the cobra.’ Had Annie not been so bold – and Serjeant Stray not so swift with the sabre – Allegra would now be laid in native earth (like her father, though he at least had succumbed in battle).
Milne nodded. ‘Indeed.’
But Hervey was intrigued, still. ‘Might you have saved the child had you found her alive, do you think?’
Milne inclined his head, as if to say the question was unanswerable. ‘Poison ingested directly? Deadlier than a bite, I should suppose.’
‘It seems to me strange that there’s no native medicine – none at least that I’ve heard tell of – after so many hundreds of years. My mare was bitten when first I was in India, and Johnson got hold of a Brahman who gave her some potion of mungo root, and she recovered. But I suspect now it was nothing of the kind – not a snakebite. Though there were distinct marks on her muzzle. Hornets, perhaps. Was it ever a subject of your medical society meetings?’
‘There were more pressing cases. I never heard tell of a snake in England kill anything but a dog.’
‘Quite.’
‘Mungo root, you say?’
‘Yes. I recall it has a botanical name suggestive of a cure, though I can’t remember what.’
‘Ophiorrhiza – snakeroot. The samperas – the snake-catchers – say the mongoose eats it and acquires immunity thereby. I’m not disposed to dismissing these things merely because they come from such an authority, but in this case I confess I’m sceptical. There was an interesting work published fifty years ago or thereabout, by an Italian monk, on the venom of the common viper. It can’t compare in potency with those here, of course, but I’m interested to know why. He was able to precipitate its constituents by alcohol, and observed that it produced not only coagulation of the blood, but puzzlingly, fluidity as well.’
‘Was that not observable in those who’d been bitten?’
‘Of course, but it’s only possible by careful examination of the blood. By microscope, I mean, and it seems he had none.’
Hervey would freely admit that he himself had no science to speak of. ‘What conclusions did he reach?’
‘Nothing of substance, except that vipers are immune to the venom.’
‘But how might they not be, since it comes from within?’
‘It comes from within, yes, but from poison sacs quite discrete from the circulatory system. But the good monk discerned also that the venom remained toxic in the prey.’
Hervey nodded. In truth, he’d had enough of snakes. If Milne wished to bring his faculties to bear on the matter, all well and good – some dragoon might be glad of it one day – but it didn’t conduce to conviviality.
‘But, this apart, the regiment is in good health, I believe I can say – have just said, indeed, in my letter to the colonel.’
‘Oh, quite so. I think we’ve come through the sickly season well, inasmuch as any season here’s more sickly than another. But the monsoon seems to bring with it particular ills … And the damned snakes washed out of their holes. Dearly should I like to know what was the Almighty’s purpose in them.’
Hervey sighed resignedly. Sometimes Milne could be persistent. ‘And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Doctor, you will not let the work of the Devil tempt you too much?’
Milne shook his head. ‘No, no; the serpent merely intrigues me as a physician, which means also that I am drawn to their part in natural history. I can’t fathom, say, why the venom of the cobra is so much greater than that of the viper, since its purpose – the killing of prey, we must suppose – is no different.’
Hervey would concede that the philosophical aspect of it was stimulating, and nodded as much. ‘Well, I’m glad this place affords you opportunity for study, since there’s evidently so little work in the infirmary to occupy you fully.’
Milne was not always quick to diagnose irony, however. ‘The business of prevention is as compelling as that of cure, Colonel. There’s a most active chirurgical society here, corresponding with Calcutta, and no shortage of subjects for inquiry. Nor, I may add, corpses for dissection.’
Hervey wished he’d steered the talk to something more wholesome, though he had to accept that his purpose in being at office at this hour was to allow his staff the opportunity to speak. ‘Is that of importance, bodie
s for dissection?’
‘To my mind, Colonel, it is of the first importance. You may take notes for twenty years – and believe me, I have – and all will likely be to you a confusion of symptoms and incoherent phenomena. Open a few bodies and this obscurity will disappear.’
‘Tell me how so, exactly.’
‘By comparison of the change in – principally – the organs. Come to one of our dissections and observe for yourself.’
Hervey frowned. There was all the difference in the world between wielding a blade in battle and cutting cold in a dissecting theatre. ‘I may think on it.’
Sammy came with more coffee.
‘But by the bye, Colonel, I must tell you of two particular matters. Serjeant Cottam, I fear, must soon be for discharge. Pronounced cataracts.’
Hervey nodded. Cottam was a steady man (Worsley thought highly of him, as long as book work wasn’t too demanding), but he had no family; it would be a long and dismal passage home. ‘We might find him something here – lighter duties, on the civil side, say – though perhaps you’ll object that the climate isn’t favourable.’
‘He likes the climate, Colonel, and the climate likes him. Alas, the very intensity of the light exacerbates things.’
‘Have you spoken of it to him, and to Worsley?’
‘I told Cottam yesterday that I’d defer his medical board for one month, but that I couldn’t risk it beyond. I haven’t had opportunity to speak with Worsley.’
‘And Cottam was … content?’
Milne sighed.
‘I can imagine. Speak with Worsley as soon as you’re able.’
‘I will. Also … How do you find Mrs Hervey … now that the monsoon’s at an end?’
Hervey smiled. ‘Exactly as at the beginning of the monsoon. In splendid health. Have you a concern?’
‘None whatever. You reassure me. I merely wondered if she found the weather enervating, as some have.’
The Tigress of Mysore Page 5