The Sepoy Mutiny

by V. A. Stuart

  “I shall say nothing, sir,” Alex assured him. He was profoundly shocked and hard put to hide his distress. From their first meeting, soon after his arrival in India eleven years before, he had loved and revered this one man above all others, seeing in him all that was best and noblest in those chosen to rule in the Company’s name. By his humanity and understanding, Henry Lawrence had tamed the newly conquered Punjab and won the trust of the defeated Sikhs. … But now, when the qualities he possessed were so sorely needed to temper justice with mercy in Oudh, it seemed a cruel fate was about to deprive this land of his guiding hand. Without his influence, revolt would be brought nearer, because control would pass into the hands of men like Martin Gubbins who, seeing the danger, could conceive only one way to counter it.

  Sensing his distress, Sir Henry said, smiling, “I’m not dead yet, my dear boy. This battered hulk will keep afloat for a while longer—please God until we have weathered the storm. But I am forgetting the reason for which I sent for you. … I want you to go to Meerut, Alex.”

  Taken by surprise, Alex stared at him. “Of course, sir, if you wish me to but I thought you said—”

  “That I wanted you to command my makeshift cavalry? I do, but the time for that is not yet. We have a few weeks and I propose to make the best use of them that I can. Don’t worry, I’ll apply for you, by the electric telegraph if necessary. But Delhi is the key to the whole complex plot which is being hatched against us.”

  “Delhi, sir?” Alex echoed, still puzzled.

  “Bear with me and I’ll explain,” Sir Henry bade him, with a return to his normal quietly decisive manner. “Let a mutiny succeed in Delhi, Alex, and it will be the signal for an uprising all over the country, from the Afghan border to Calcutta. If it should fail, on the other hand, I am of the firm opinion that the planned insurrection will fizzle out everywhere else like a damp squib. I think it was some fourteen years ago that I published an article in the Calcutta Review, pointing out with what ease a hostile force could seize Delhi … although, when I wrote it, I was imagining the Sikhs in the role of aggressors, not our own Bengal sepoys!” His tone was wry. “I can even quote to you from memory the grim forecast I made. ‘Does any sane man doubt,’ I asked my readers, ‘that 24 hours would swell the hundreds of rebels into thousands and that, in a week, every ploughshare in Delhi would be turned into a sword?’ Alas, I believe those words to be true now and the danger never greater. I also believe that the mutiny will begin there because, as you know, the Delhi garrison contains no British troops.”

  Alex inclined his head, aware of the strange anomaly by means of which the last Mogul Emperor, the eighty-year-old Shah Mohammed Bahadur—although, in fact, a pensioned puppet—had been permitted to retain the outward trappings of his lost sovereignty. Under a treaty concluded with his father, the Company paid him a princely salary, allowed him to occupy the palace of his ancestors within the walls of Delhi’s Red Fort and, for political reasons, maintained the carefully fostered pretense that he was still the ruler of India’s Muslim millions. Although the army’s largest arsenal was situated in Delhi, it was guarded by native troops. They were stationed in cantonments built on a two-mile-long stretch of high, rocky ground, known as the Ridge, on the northwestern side of the city and outside its walls. Under the terms of the treaty, no European regiments could be included in the Delhi garrison, lest their alien presence offend the old king or destroy the already fading illusion that he ruled in fact, as well as in name. The nearest British troops were in Meerut, 38 miles away and these, Alex knew, included the 60th Rifles—a fine regiment, over a thousand strong—and six hundred men of the Carabineers, the 6th Dragoon Guards, both Crimean regiments, which …

  “General Hewitt has over two thousand British troops under his command in Meerut, Alex,” Sir Henry said, as if reading his thoughts. “And his command includes Delhi. … I am not the governor-general and I have no more power to issue instructions to him than I have to General Wheeler. I wish, between ourselves, that I had! In the light of my firmly held conviction that what happens in Delhi must affect us all, I would give a great deal to be able to talk to General Hewitt—indeed, if God were to give me a pair of wings at this moment, I would use them in order to transport myself to Meerut. And once there”—he sighed—“I would exercise all the eloquence I possess in an effort to persuade the general to send some of those two thousand British soldiers to Delhi—on any excuse! And, if I failed to persuade him, I should endeavour to convince Brigadier-General Graves that it would be in his best interests, as station commander in Delhi, to request that a battery of horse artillery and a strong detachment of Her Majesty’s 60th Rifles should be posted there, at least until this trouble is over.” He paused, eyeing Alex keenly, the craggy white brows lifted in mute question. “I have no wings and I cannot go myself, but I have you! Alex, my dear boy, do you understand what I am asking of you?”

  Alex met the question in the anxious grey eyes, conscious of a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach, as the enormity of the task he was being asked to undertake slowly became clear to him. He had met Major-General William Hewitt some years ago in Peshawar and had formed no very favourable impression of the obese, indolent old man, whose lack of initiative had led to his being relieved of his previous command. The Moulvi’s scornful description of the Company’s grey-beards fitted Hewitt all too aptly, he reflected; of the two, Brigadier Graves was the more likely to chance his arms if he considered the situation sufficiently serious to demand it. But even he might hesitate to break the terms of the treaty on his own responsibility; it would be a different matter were Sir Henry Lawrence to advise such a course in person or perhaps by letter. In that case … Alex frowned.

  “Am I to take it, sir,” he asked diffidently, “that you require more of me than simply to carry a despatch to General Hewitt?”

  “A great deal more, Alex. I have no authority to issue written advice to military commanders beyond my own boundaries. Indeed, some of those within my boundaries are not above disregarding my attempts to guide them.” Sir Henry sighed resignedly. “I have requested Lord Canning to grant me plenary military powers and I’ve no doubt he’ll accede to my request but, even when he does, my authority will still be limited to Oudh. I’d put my case to him but there isn’t time and, in any event, I cannot absent myself from here. So I can only ask you to be my unofficial advocate … and I ask because the matter is of such importance.”

  It was impossible to refuse. “I’ll go to Meerut gladly, sir. But I have neither your powers of persuasion nor your influence, so do not, I beg of you, place too much reliance on me. I mean, sir, for one of my rank to presume to suggest a course of action to a general officer commanding a division would be …” suddenly lost for words, Alex broke off. He added unhappily, “General Hewitt would listen to you, of course, but he may refuse even to give me a hearing. From what I know of him, sir, he’s not keen to take action on his own responsibility.”

  “So I have heard,” Henry Lawrence agreed. “But he has the power to act—Delhi is under his command—and desperate situations call for desperate remedies, do they not? You can only do your best to persuade him of the extreme gravity of the situation, and I know I can rely on you to do that, Alex. I intend also to arm you with written proof that the King of Delhi has been approached by certain of the plotters, and that both he and his son, Abu Bakr, recently received the Nana of Bithur in audience.”

  “The Nana, sir?” Alex stared at him. “Then he is in it!”

  “I believe that he is in it up to here!” Sir Henry gestured to his throat. “But he is cautious, like all Mahrattas. He waits to see what success the conspirators achieve before openly throwing in his lot with them. And old Bahadur Shah also waits, for he is afraid lest his pension should be taken from him. Besides, he is very old and he has everything to lose. For his sons, however, it is a different matter—they are aware that his pension and his title will die with him. Theirs are the letters I shall give you and, if the evide
nce of conspiracy they contain fails to convince General Hewitt, it may jolt Brigadier-General Graves. My secretary, George Cooper, has them ready for you—copies, of course, for I dare not part with the originals in case Lord Canning requires to see them. I shall be sending him copies also, as soon as I can find a reliable courier. But you’ll be ready to leave in the morning, I trust?”

  It took an effort to hide his misgivings but Alex made it. “Yes, of course, sir, I’ll be ready.”

  “Then you had better allow George to brief you now. He will give you chapter and verse and explain how I came by the letters.” Sir Henry put an arm round his shoulders as they descended from the rooftop together. Reaching the door of his office, he halted and held out his hand. “May God go with you, my dear boy! My gratitude is yours, whatever may be the result of your efforts but I shall pray for your success, and sleep a little easier in the hope of it. And”—he smiled—“if the plenary military powers I have asked for are accorded to me, I will give you a step in rank to enable you to talk on more equal terms with General Hewitt. Notice of it will come by the electric telegraph, with your secondment to the Lucknow force.”

  An anxiously hovering aide-de-camp bore him off to sleep for what remained of the night and Alex sought out his secretary who, as Sir Henry had promised, had the letters he was to take with him already tied up in a neat package, waiting to be collected.

  “Study them at your leisure, Captain Sheridan,” George Cooper advised. “You read Persian, I believe, but anyway I’ve included a translation and a note which confirms their authenticity. As you will see from the note, they were brought to Sir Henry—at considerable risk to himself—by a subedar of the King of Delhi’s own bodyguard. I don’t know for what purpose my chief wishes you to have them but you’ll take good care of them, won’t you? They are dangerous documents and if even these copies were to fall into the wrong hands, I don’t like to think what the consequences might be.” Receiving Alex’s assurance, he got to his feet, stifling a yawn. “I’m tired,” he confessed. “Sir Henry keeps late hours … but you must be even more weary than I am. You had an early start, did you not?”

  “And I am due for another,” Alex said ruefully, placing the package in his breast pocket. “I ride for Meerut at dawn.”

  “Meerut? Sir Henry did not tell me your destination. Some rather disquieting news came in from Meerut by dak this evening. I haven’t passed it on to him yet, thinking to let him have an undisturbed night.” Cooper hunted among the papers on his desk. “Yes, here it is.” He read through the report, frowning. “Apparently the C. O. of the 3rd Light Cavalry, Colonel Carmichael Smyth, ordered a parade of a picked body of 90 of his sowars and 85 of them refused to accept the Lee-Enfield cartridges. General Hewitt convened a court of inquiry and, based on its findings, the eighty-five men are to be tried by court martial on a charge of mutiny … that will bring matters to a head, will it not? Although one doesn’t know whether it’s a good thing or not—to grasp the nettle, I mean. Certainly Sir Henry won’t like it. He’s very much opposed to provocation in any form just now. He’s convinced that it could lead to a full-scale sepoy rebellion, as he probably told you. Indeed, you heard him at dinner.”

  “Yes,” Alex said thoughtfully, “I did. “The news was, as Cooper had said, disquieting, but there was little to be gained by discussing it now. Recalling his promise to let Emmy know the result of his interview, he arranged for the forwarding of a letter to her next day and went to his own room to pen a few hasty and deliberately uninformative lines. The brief missive addressed and sealed, he entrusted it to the house servant who had lighted him to his room and instructed the man to have him called at dawn. This done, he undressed and flung himself thankfully onto his bed but he had hardly fallen asleep when he was awakened by Partap Singh calling him urgently by name.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” He sat up irritably, swearing under his breath. No light entered the room through the window opposite and, with the taste of wine and cigar smoke stale in his mouth, he was in no mood to consider his orderly’s feelings. “I sent an order that I was to be called at dawn. Was it not given to you?”

  “Yes, Sahib, it was. Unhappily—”

  “Unhappily it is not yet dawn!” Alex accused. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and saw then that Partap Singh’s bearded face was set in anxious lines. Relenting, he asked, “Is there something wrong? Tell me what it is.”

  “One of the Sahib’s syces …” the orderly began. “I think, Sahib, that you should see for yourself. The man is dead and his fellow, as might be expected, has run away, lest he be apprehended for the deed.”

  “You mean that one of them killed the other?” Alex held out his hand for his shirt. It seemed unlikely; his two syces were brothers—quiet, inoffensive men, who did their work well and had been in his employ for almost two years.

  “I do not know, Sahib.” Woodenly, Partap Singh assisted him to dress. “I know only that when I went to rouse them, so that they might prepare our horses for the journey, I found the fellow who is named Ram Dass lying dead. The other, Lal Dass, was nowhere to be seen. The horses have not been harmed and nothing has been stolen from the baggage packs, so it would seem not to be the work of budmashes.”

  “I see.” Fully awake now, Alex accompanied him across a moonlit courtyard to the Residency stables. A little group of syces and grass-cutters had gathered round one of the stalls, chattering excitedly amongst themselves but they lapsed into silence at the sound of his approach and, standing aside to permit him to pass, eyed him apprehensively as he did so. Like Lal Dass, they were ready to vanish into the darkness in an instant if they scented trouble or feared that they might be blamed for what had occurred. Wisely, he said nothing. With Partap Singh a tall, martial figure at his back, he entered the stall and Sultan, who was tethered there, whinnied in recognition, straining at his head-rope as if he, too, were anxious to take flight.

  Alex soothed the frightened animal and, motioning to Partap Singh to bring his lantern nearer, dropped to his knees beside the crumpled body, which lay face downwards on a heap of blood-soaked straw. It needed only a glance to tell him that the unfortunate man was dead and the cause of death became apparent when he turned the body over—the syce’s throat was slit from ear to ear. The onlookers exclaimed in horror when they saw it and pressed closer but he ignored them. The body was warm to his touch; this, and the crimson stream that still oozed sluggishly from the hideously gaping wound, suggested that whoever had taken the life of Ram Dass could only have done so a short time ago … an hour, perhaps, certainly not much more. Could it have been the brother, as Partap Singh appeared to think?

  Bending lower, Alex studied the dead man’s thin, pock-marked face, shocked by the expression of abject terror that lingered in the wide-open, staring eyes and drawn-back lips. He had seen death in all its forms on the battlefield and in the cholera-infested camps of the Crimea but seldom had he seen such fear in any human face before, living or dead. A brother, even if he had suddenly gone out of his mind and run amok, would surely not have inspired so great a degree of fear. Ram Dass, bound by the ties of kinship, would have sought to reason with him and restrain him from violence. As a last resort, he would have defended himself but there was no indication to suggest that he had. The straw on which he lay was scarcely disturbed; his clothing, though bloodstained, was not torn and there were no cuts or slashes on his skinny arms. Clearly he must have lain paralyzed with terror, like a sheep awaiting the slaughterer’s knife, too scared to attempt to ward off the blow that had killed him.

  A stranger then but who … and why? Unless robbery had been the motive. But according to Partap Singh nothing had been taken. What reason could anyone have to murder a humble, defenseless syce? Anyone, that was to say, except his brother, whose reasons could have been legion. Still only half-convinced, Alex got to his feet. Glancing at the circle of dark faces clustered round the stall, he asked of no one in particular, “Was anything heard? This man had a brother, who has v
anished—did any of you witness a quarrel between them or hear voices raised in anger?”

  Heads were shaken in mute denial. Nothing had been seen or heard, a white-bearded chowkidar asserted, finding his tongue at last. No voice had been raised, until the Sahib’s orderly had found the body and roused the sleepers with news of his discovery.

  “But you did not sleep—you are a watchman,” Alex reminded him. “Saw you no stranger, no budmash without lawful business here?”

  “I was wakeful, Sahib,” the old chowkidar assured him. “But I saw nothing untoward. My post”—he pointed with the stout staff that was the badge of his trade—“is yonder, on the other side of the stable compound. I saw no one enter or leave.”

  But Lal Dass could have made his escape by the rear of the stables, Alex reflected. He had only to cross a smaller compound, clamber over a low wall and he could swiftly lose himself in the narrow, twisting streets of the native city, where it would be useless to search for him. The killer, if he were not Lal Dass, could, of course, have entered and departed by the same route without anyone being the wiser. These stables were used by visitors to the Residency and no particular check was kept on the occupants; if the chowkidar and the other syces denied all knowledge of what had happened here during the hours of darkness, there was nothing more that he could do. He could not delay his own departure for any longer than it took to replace his two lost syces. Already daylight must be fast approaching, and he had a very long journey ahead of him. He would leave a chit in George Cooper’s office, he decided, and then start on his way, depending on the secretary to report the matter to the civil authorities if he saw fit to do so.

  He said, turning to Partap Singh, “Engage two men, if you can find any here, in place of the two we have lost. We must start at first light, even if we have to lead the baggage animals ourselves. There’ll probably be men in the first village we come to, if there aren’t any here.”