The Tigress of Mysore

by Allan Mallinson

  Hervey nodded.

  ‘It was nothing but a pleasant bathe,’ said Fairbrother, airily.

  ‘If in the present danger of muggurs,’ suggested Hervey.

  Fairbrother shook his head, smiling.

  Abhina gabbled something, which neither he nor Hervey could catch.

  Hervey smiled benevolently.

  Abhina’s head shook side to side.

  ‘With your leave, General,’ said Captain Hart, holding up a hand to Abhina.

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘The hijda asks Captain Fairbrother if he didn’t see the python.’

  Fairbrother quickened. ‘What python? Where?’

  Captain Hart asked Abhina for details.

  More strange words, much gesturing and waving of the knife.

  ‘It was swimming towards you as you returned. He cut off its head.’

  Silence.

  Hervey sighed. What a place was this India, where a man mayn’t put his hand in the grass without fear of a krait, or swim without fear of a multitude of deadly agents. And soon there’d be yet more storm and steel. Was there ever end of it?

  XXVI

  The Walls of Jericho

  Evening the following day

  ‘My God, Hervey, but that dragoon’s been worth his weight in gold. I thought we were confounded.’

  Fairbrother looked like a sodden chimney sweep, but his eyes were bright.

  ‘How so? What dragoon?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? The enginemen bolted, damn their eyes. Your sappers were no help – said they’d never seen a steam engine – and I myself couldn’t fathom it, though I tried every valve and pipe, and then Collins said there was a dragoon who’d been an engineman. Shaw. And he’s damn-well done it. Both engines. There’s only a foot of water left.’

  ‘And you’re certain it can’t be flooded again?’

  ‘Nothing’s certain, Hervey, but I’d risk my life on it.’

  ‘The remaining water – how long will it take?’

  ‘An hour, I reckon. Two, perhaps. Not more, certainly, at the rate they’ve pumped so far.’

  Hervey turned to Captain Hart. ‘The sappers are ready?’

  ‘They are, General. They’ve brought down sixty barrels from the arsenal. And if I might add, given more time to fathom its workings, I’m confident we ourselves could have got the engines working.’

  Hervey had better things to do, but soothing Hart’s wounded amour propre was probably in the circumstances worth his effort. Officers trained in scientific methods at Woolwich were invaluable in their way, but could be decidedly prickly. And dragging barrels of gunpowder the length of a submarine tunnel was a dismal prospect. ‘I’m certain of it, Captain Hart. And I commend your sappers for the enterprise.’ He turned to Fairbrother. ‘And I’m obliged once again for your address. And Shaw’s.’

  His friend smiled quizzically. ‘So it’s to be the second, then?’

  Hervey had conceived two plans. The first was to intrude a force via the tunnel, but that would mean digging out a part of it (or blowing out – perilous in the extreme). Surprise would soon be lost, and the defenders could counter in numbers. The second plan was to pack the tunnel with powder where it ran under the outer wall, and make a practicable breach. A storming party – he refused to call it a ‘forlorn hope’ as they did in the Peninsula – would then cross the moat in makeshift boats. There was perhaps a chance that they’d take the place without a shot, for by the old rule of siege, if the defenders held out when a practicable breach had been made, that meant no quarter would be given. But here, where the defenders were insurgents and oath-breakers, the gallows awaited them anyway. Who would choose to be spared death by the sword only to die by the rope? This did, however, simplify Hervey’s position. For if the gallows awaited them by due process of law, there could hardly be qualms about summary justice by the sword. In the end, though, with great reluctance, he’d embrace the expediency he found so repugnant in Major Sleeman’s system: amnesty for the dewan’s ‘foot soldiers’. But there’d be none for Ashok Acharya, for that would be a signal to every would-be usurper in India that his enterprise was one of limited liability; nor amnesty for any thug who’d taken refuge and could be recognized. Besides, would it not be the Ranee’s prerogative that he himself would be usurping?

  ‘Your Rahabs are ready?’ asked Hervey cheerily of Fairbrother.

  ‘They are.’

  ‘And you trust them yet?’

  ‘I’ve offered them so many rubies they’ll look like Shakti on her wedding day.’

  ‘Very well. Let them do their worst – and best.’ He turned to Captain Hart. ‘Your sappers to the tunnel, then, as soon as may be.’ And then to Major Parry, ‘Orders to the brigadiers.’

  Parry looked content at last. ‘Very good, General.’

  And now Hervey knew he could do no more – nothing at least that would materially change the preparations; and when there was no more for a general to do, it was his duty to rest.

  ‘Goodnight, then, gentlemen.’

  * * *

  And Joshua rose early in the morning …

  ‘Tea, Colonel.’

  Corporal Johnson’s hand summoned him from his deepest sleep in weeks.

  Hervey sat up and listened to the dawn. It was not given to a man to know when would be his last; to a soldier especially. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. His thoughts were of Georgiana, though she was safe enough – and of Kezia.

  As daylight came he shaved and put on clean linen, and took a leisurely breakfast of eggs, fruit and coffee.

  Then he climbed into the saddle.

  The morning was clear and fresh, the troops he passed were in good heart, well concealed, and the guns on the walls of the fortress-palace were silent but for the odd speculative shot, answered each time by howitzer and explosive shell – no doubt bringing curses from the dewan’s poor foot soldiers for their own imprudent artillery. Here was the long game of siege as practised for centuries – since the days of the Ancients, indeed, when the catapult hurled Greek fire.

  It was nearing nine o’clock, the time appointed for the exploding of the mine. Hervey rode out into full view of the walls with his staff and escort, and took post in the shade of a lone deodar – a tree as naturally alien to Chintal as was he in his red coat.

  He took out his telescope to survey the walls, in particular that part under which the barrels would do their firework. Captain Hart had told him the powder would certainly bring down a good portion of masonry, but he could make no estimate of the length of wall or the extent of the collapse. (He thought it probable there would be a mound of rubble to climb, but that a deal of it would fall into the moat – a help thereby if it came to storming the breach.)

  On the walls directly above the mine he could see a number of gunners and a huge cannon, its barrel long enough to send a ball half a mile, though to what purpose in a siege was unclear, and he felt a momentary pang of regret for what was about to be their fate. Until, that is, he smiled grimly at the thought of the Prussian’s contempt of the Menschenfreund, the philanthropist. ‘Cruel necessity’, Cromwell had said of such things. And so he must play God again and send these distant figures to their own. He closed the cover of his watch, braced himself, and said, ‘Well, gentlemen, we shall see what we shall see.’

  The seconds ticked past – ten, eleven, twelve.

  Then the deafening explosion.

  It was greater than he’d heard in an age; greater even than Bhurtpore.

  Minnie shied. Stones fell about them, disconcertingly if harmlessly. Larger ones made fountains in the moat.

  The corner of the curtain wall was invisible in the smoke and dust. It was a full minute before he could see properly.

  When he did see, it astonished him. The breach was fifty yards at least – as big as he’d ever seen – and a ramp of rubble almost filling the moat.

  He snapped his telescope shut. ‘Capital work, Hart; capital!’

  Colonel Lindesay�
��s brigade appeared from the cover of the havelis to the east, their orders to halt at the moat to make a show of what awaited the defenders if they chose to resist … And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

  Hervey sighed with more relief than he cared to show. Joshua himself could have wished for no more.

  ‘Mr Hussey, your service now, if you please!’ he called, once he’d settled Minnie.

  The gallopers had drawn lots for the privilege of taking the terms to the palace. The cornet of the Thirteenth had won.

  Hussey put his horse straight into a canter and made for the droog – with him a corporal carrying a flag of truce so large that it trailed in the earth, for it was Hervey’s intention that everyone watching from the walls should know what it signified, and that they might therefore ponder on what he trusted the hijdas had been telling them all night.

  Within the citadel, warned by the ‘Rahabs’ somehow that defied understanding, the Ranee stood with her bodyguard. She’d dressed in her finest silks – yellow, like her rissalah ‘sworn to die’ – with a jewelled sword at her waist and a pistol in each hand. She would not be taken alive by Ashok Acharya only to be put to death in ignominious fashion later. He would for sure storm her fastness once his own walls were breached, for what did he have to bargain with but her life? He had more than enough guns and men to do so. He’d pay dear, though. He’d made of her a ‘tigress’ – for his own purposes, and no doubt laughing at the deceit – and so now he would feel her claws.

  Down came the drawbridge save for a last few feet, and Hussey rode up to place with great ceremony the ultimatum in the hand of the officer of the watch.

  As he galloped back, the drawbridge rose laboriously. The walls – the cannon – remained silent.

  ‘Were any words exchanged, Mr Hussey?’

  ‘He said “Namaste”, General,’ replied the cornet, sounding perplexed.

  ‘Promising.’

  The ultimatum, in Hindoostanee, was stark:

  Immediately upon the delivery of these presents, all troops and their followers within the walls of the palace are to surrender to the forces of His Britannic Majesty’s Honourable East India Company upon guarantee of safe passage and amnesty, except the person of Ashok Acharya who must surrender unconditionally and quit the palace without arms. Flags of surrender are to be hoist at once. Or else the palace will be taken by the explosion of a second mine, and by storm, in which case No quarter for troops, nor followers of either sex, nor children, shall be given.

  But no one other than his closest staff, and soon Ashok Acharya (and, if the hijdas had done their work, Acharya’s poor ‘foot soldiers’) knew what precisely was the threat contained in the ultimatum, for he wanted no Jericho … And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword – like Badajoz and its murderous blood-lust, rape and rapine.

  The Prussian said that intruding a principle of moderation into the business of war was absurd, but that not merely offended his sensibility (which he might reasonably overcome) but went against his experience of battle so-won. The ultimatum was a ploy, a ruse de guerre. He’d no more intention of putting the dewan’s men and their followers to the sword than he had the means of a second mine. But none within the walls could know that – or, at least, be sure of knowing.

  Ten minutes passed, and no flags.

  Then a gun from the south-east corner fired.

  His heart sank.

  Lindesay’s orders were to begin the assault only when he himself sent word.

  ‘Gentlemen, I have done my best to spare blood. But now no longer. Come.’

  He would lead the storming of the breach himself.

  ‘Wait! General – look!’

  Not flags, but clothes of every colour being waved, and muskets and swords thrown from the walls like ballast from a foundering ship.

  And then the drawbridge was coming down, and men not waiting for it but jumping into the water, rats from the same ship.

  ‘By heavens, General, it’s worked!’ Parry was almost beside himself.

  ‘Now God be thanked,’ said Hervey quietly.

  And Fairbrother; and his steam engines; and Shaw, from the black pits of Somerset. And Fairbrother’s hijdas; he prayed most earnestly they were safe. And the young men that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had …

  But no, he himself would go in – and his young men – and bring out the Ranee ‘and all that she had’.

  Worsley brought the Sixth forward, their orders to enter the fortress at once to see what was what and do what they could. (No orders could have been more specific; for how even could Hervey have been sure the mine would explode, let alone the wall collapse and the garrison surrender?)

  They lost no time, only the press of deserting men slowing them.

  But Hervey could watch no longer. Down he galloped – Parry, Acton, half a dozen cornets and orderlies, the baboo and now Fairbrother all hurtling after him like a field in full cry.

  The flat of the sword hastened their way up the droog and over the drawbridge.

  Inside was the litter of siege – the bodies of the dead, the wounded, the cowering. The dragoons were making order of it, at least, and Worsley was already into the citadel. The hijdas, crowded in a corner of the bailey, began jabbering when Fairbrother appeared, rushing to him with their skirts held high.

  ‘Huzoor! Huzoor!’ – and a flood of words that only the baboo might understand.

  ‘Sahib, they say man who kill wife of Colonel Bell is here, and also dewan is fast in tower.’ The baboo pointed to the turret commanding the drawbridge.

  Hervey jumped from the saddle. It was time to take his prisoner. It was a poor place to hide, but doubtless he hadn’t had opportunity to choose.

  Fairbrother was intent on the killer of Mira Bai, however. ‘Where, Abhina?’

  Abhina pointed to half a dozen men crouching by the wall of the bastion. Not soldiers, certainly.

  ‘Accha.’

  Hervey saw, and went with him. (Ashok Acharya could wait – in fear and trembling, he hoped.)

  The men huddled the more, doubtless expecting the worst.

  ‘Which one, Abhina?’

  Abhina pointed.

  Hervey told the baboo to make him show his face.

  The man raised his head as far as he dare. Even so—

  ‘Ghufoor Khan!’ gasped Fairbrother.

  ‘What—’

  The Khan sprang like a hare and made for the bastion.

  Fairbrother fell cursing at a leg thrust his way.

  Hervey gave chase, pulling pistol from belt.

  A ball from Acton’s carbine glanced the Khan’s shoulder but failed to slow him.

  Hervey took aim, full stride.

  Too late; Khan was into the bastion before he could draw bead.

  Dragoons came running.

  Hervey followed into the gloom, Acton close at heel.

  Along the corridors, checking every room, every cell, every nook and cranny.

  The length of the dank, dark bastion.

  Until just the snake pit stood between the panting Khan and his escape.

  Torches blazed on the walls. There was no more hiding.

  Hervey stopped, took a breath and raised his pistol. ‘Halt, Ghufoor Khan! There is no escape.’

  But the Khan wouldn’t yield. He snarled, cursed, and then leapt as he’d never leapt before – even to use the roomal.

  He gained the other side, but with a foot only.

  His fall was heavy.

  Hervey lowered his pistol and edged towards the pit.

  The spreading hood rose like a ship making sail as the Khan curled in a ball. Hervey bro
ught his pistol up fast, but the hamadryad struck – once, twice, a third time and then a fourth.

  A single bite would have been enough.

  Hervey grimaced; looked away. It wasn’t what he’d hoped for – deliberate, judicial, by the rope.

  Nor was it instant.

  But death would come in hours, at least, not days, for the hamadryad was a ‘good’ snake.

  But a painful death.

  Ghufoor Khan began pleading. ‘Huzoor …’

  Hervey recoiled. The man who’d murdered hundreds, even thousands, by his command or by his own hand; the man who in order to save his own skin had borne witness against those who’d followed him, and who had then, plainly, broken his parole to join this company of thieves and murderers; the man with the blood of Mira Bai still warm on his hands – Mira Bai, who’d been faithful to her Ranee even unto death; that such a man should plead to be spared a painful end …

  Hervey turned to walk away.

  Acton looked at him, puzzled. ‘Shall I, Colonel?’

  Hervey stopped, then turned back. ‘No; the duty’s mine.’

  When they came out, it was to the hijdas’ excited gesturing again. There at the foot of the tower in a bloody pool lay the body of Ashok Acharya.

  ‘Mine,’ said Fairbrother grimly.

  It hardly mattered. A battle never ended tidily, the trumpet sounding ceasefire and all fire ceasing. There were always ‘loose ends’ to tie up – random shots. He’d not said ‘no quarter’; but there was ‘discretion’. The details, if needed, could wait. It was anyway convenient.

  His, Hervey’s, mission was done – as far, at least, as the Company was concerned. There were a great many thugs he’d sent to their maker, one way or another, and His Majesty’s troops were in possession of the capital of the lapsed state of Chintal. There remained just the Ranee, the would-be ‘tigress’; but instead a poor, caged thing; a ‘paper tiger’, as they said in China – che lo foo, a mere false device to frighten people.

  And they’d certainly been anxious at Fort William.

  In truth, he’d admit that Suneyla had become his principal mission, though it served the Company as well as his own conscience.