by V. A. Stuart
“The only order be did give, sir,” another officer put in, “was for the arrest of Lieutenant Möller, of the 11th, because he went into the Sudder Bazaar without permission to bring out the butcher who murdered poor Mrs Chambers. The fellow was boasting about what he’d done, quite openly, sir. However, General Wilson gave permission for a drumhead court martial and the butcher’s been tried and condemned to death. So far, though, he’s the only one who has.”
Alex listened, unable to believe the evidence of his own ears. This was worse, infinitely worse than he had expected, even of the obese and senile Hewitt. He glanced anxiously to where Lavinia Patterson had been standing and saw that she was being lifted onto his saddle-bow by the young officer who had tried to comfort her. The carriage, with its tragic burden, had been moved from her immediate vicinity, he was relieved to notice, and Gough said, reading his thoughts, “She’s with her brother, sir—young Luke Patterson of the 11th. He told us his parents and sister were in Delhi. Er—I’ll see about a horse for you, shall I?”
Alex nodded his thanks. The brandy in Craigie’s flask was going to his head a little but he was grateful for it, nonetheless. “You’ll continue the patrol, will you not?” he asked Craigie, returning the flask. “There will be other fugitives, quite a number of them, probably, and they’ll need help as much as we did.”
“Our orders,” the younger man said, avoiding his gaze, “were to return to Meerut before daylight. But,” he shrugged, “I’m in no mood to adhere strictly to General Hewitt’s orders, I must confess. We’ll send you back, sir, with Miss Patterson, and I’ll take a few of our fellows and see if we can find anyone else. I can depend on you to make our excuses to General Wilson, can I not, sir?”
“You can,” Alex assured him grimly. “Yes, by heaven, you can!”
Gough was coming with a spare horse, he saw, and he turned, preparing to mount it when suddenly, without warning, his vision blurred. He put his foot into the stirrup, feeling for it blindly, the night sky revolving in crazy circles above his head. The brandy, he thought, fool that he was to have taken it on an empty stomach; he hadn’t eaten for 24 hours, of course it had gone to his head. Bracing himself, he made another attempt to mount.
“Are you all right, sir?” Gough asked, concerned.
He swayed and would have fallen had not Craigie moved swiftly to break his fall.
“The colonel’s wounded!” he heard someone exclaim, the voice seeming to come from a long way away. “Good God, he’s been hit—taken a musket ball in the shoulder, I think. Yes, look, the back of his jacket is covered with blood. The poor fellow only has one arm … we’d better get him to a surgeon as fast as we can, I think. He …”
The voices faded into silence as once again the dark and bottomless pit opened to receive him.
A long time later, he wakened in a lamp-lit room, to find a stranger bending over him.
“All right, sir,” the stranger told him cheerfully. “You’re in hospital in Meerut and I’ve taken a musket ball out of the top of your scapula. No serious damage, the bone’s nicked, that’s all, and I’ve had to put a few stitches in the back of your head. But you’ll live to fight another day, so don’t worry. Try to sleep now, if you can.”
Alex accepted his advice gratefully and let his heavy lids fall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEWS of the outbreak of mutiny in Meerut and the subsequent fall of Delhi was brought by an officer on horseback from Ambala, where the telegraph line terminated, to the commander-in-chief in Simla on May 12th. General Anson was at dinner when the message was handed to him. Because there were ladies present, Anson slipped the note under his plate and courteously waited until the port was being circulated before reading it … but having done so, he took action at once. His aides were sent posthaste to order all British troops on furlough in the hills to march to Ambala and he reached there himself, 36 hours later, to establish telegraphic communication with the governor-general in Calcutta and with Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab.
Thereafter, preceded by rumor and speculation, the news spread throughout the length and breadth of India; to be received with jubilation by the plotters and with stunned incredulity by the Company’s British officials.
Emmy Sheridan heard it in Cawnpore on the 15th, from the midwife who had assisted at the premature birth of her son, ten days previously and at first she, too, had difficulty in believing it. Then, when realization of what the disaster meant slowly sank into her numbed mind, she wept, feeling as if her heart would break and the midwife, a rough but kindly woman, offered what comfort she could.
“There, ma’am, there,” she soothed, seating herself on the bed and enfolding the sobbing girl in her plump, motherly arms. “It’s not the end of the world, is it? And it may not happen here. They say that General Wheeler has sent for reinforcements from Calcutta and, even if they don’t get here in time, the Nana Sahib has promised us his protection … and besides, there are the entrenchments. My husband says we’ll be safe enough inside the entrenchments, until a relief force arrives.”
“I’m not worrying about our safety, Mrs Miller,” Emmy whispered fiercely.
“No, of course not, ma’am. You’re upset and it’s only natural that you should be with the captain in Meerut But there weren’t many of them killed in Meerut. There couldn’t have been, with all those queen’s regiments there; it stands to sense there couldn’t. Although my husband says …” She talked on volubly, giving the views of her husband, who was the quartermastersergeant of the 53rd Native Infantry, but Emmy shut her ears to the sound.
She had received no letters from Alex, apart from the hurried note he had sent her from Lucknow to say that he was leaving for Meerut next day. She did not even know whether he had reached his destination, she thought wretchedly. She had written him an equally hurried note, after the baby’s birth, in which she had endeavoured to explain to him how that unexpected event had rendered it impossible for her to keep the promise she had made him to accompany her sister and brother-in-law to Calcutta. Harry’s orders had brooked no delay; she had been compelled to let the two of them go without her and it had been on the advice of the garrison doctor that she had done so … wise advice, as it had proved, for her labor had started within hours of their departure. But Alex, naturally—if he were able to write at all—would address his letters to her in Calcutta and it might be weeks, even months, before she heard from him. The mail would inevitably be delayed if there was trouble and some letters might not be delivered at all, her own included, so that Alex would have no more idea of her whereabouts than she had of his. According to the reports, it had been his regiment—the 3rd Light Cavalry—which had started the mutiny.
“A sepoy in my husband’s regiment,” Mrs Miller was saying indignantly. “He had the cheek to accost me in the bazaar this morning and tell me that none of us would be doing our shopping there much longer. And when I asked him what he meant, he spat, ma’am, spat at my feet, if you please, and said we’d none of us be alive two weeks from now! I gave him the sharp edge of my tongue, you may be sure.”
“How horrible,” Emmy exclaimed. She lay back on her pillows, evading Mrs Miller’s embrace and the woman, realizing that she had allowed her indignation to carry her away, stood up, smoothing her apron and looking down at her anxiously.
“I’ll order tea for you, ma’am,” she promised. “And you can be drinking it while I see to the poor wee soul’s needs, before I bring him to you.”
She always referred thus to the baby, Emmy thought, having to make an effort to hide her resentment. He was pathetically small, it was true; a tiny, red-faced creature, with scarcely any flesh on his bones and a tendency to resume the curled-up position he had occupied before his premature arrival, but he was not a poor wee soul. And he was not, please God, destined to leave the world as precipitately as he had entered it, whatever might be Mrs Miller’s opinion. Furthermore, he had a name; the chaplain had christened him, in a brief ceremony performed soon after his birth. At her request, t
he name William had been bestowed on him, after Alex’s oldest and most valued friend, Colonel William Beatson, with whom they had both shared so many joys and sorrows during the Crimean War. Alex, she knew, had intended to invite him to act as godfather if the baby was a son but …
“I’ll just plump up these pillows for you, Mrs Sheridan,” the midwife said. A strong, work-roughened hand behind Emmy’s head, she subjected the pillows to a vigorous pummelling, tucked in the sheet and finally bustled out, calling loudly for the bearer in a mixture of English and Hindustani. “Koi hai—koi hai! Oh, there you are, Bearer. Take tea to the memsahib, chae lao, jeldi. And you can bring me a pot too, while you’re about it. I’ll be attending to the baba-sahib.” The voice receded at last and Emmy wearily closed her eyes.
It was hot in the bedroom, hot and airless; despite the punkah creaking above her head, she felt stifled, hardly able to breathe. Mrs Miller had drawn the sheet constrictingly tight. She sighed, lacking the energy to tug it loose. If only she knew where Alex was, she thought, if only there were some way of finding out what he was doing, what he intended to do. She could not, would not believe that he was dead; that was unthinkable. To believe anything of the kind would be to lose her own desire to live and, for the sake of the poor wee—for little William’s sake, she must not give up hope. He would need all her care, all her love and pity if his frail hold on life were not to be broken and, if Mrs Miller was right, and they were all soon to be herded into General Wheeler’s hastily constructed entrenchment, she would have to make an effort to regain her lost strength and courage, so that she might give her son the care he needed.
She thought of the entrenchment and bit back another sigh. Many members of the garrison considered that the general’s choice of a site left much to be desired and Alex, she remembered, had shared this opinion but Sir Hugh Wheeler, having once made up his mind, was not to be turned from his purpose. The site he was now busy preparing for the reception of both civil and military inhabitants of the station was in the open, on the south side of the city and close to the Allahabad road. It contained two newly constructed European barracks, one of which was intended for use as a hospital and had additional sanitary outhouses and verandas built on to it—a fact by which the general set great store, according to his wife, Emmy remembered.
“With so many women and children to be accommodated, as well as civilians,” Lady Wheeler had said, in her musical, persuasive Indian voice, “one must think of these things. And it is within sight of the road by which our reinforcements will come, in easy reach of the cantonment bungalows and close to our own residence. My dear husband is not a young man—he celebrated his 75th birthday quite recently—and I’m thankful that he has decided on the barracks site. At least it will mean that he does not have to ride six miles in the hot sun to supervise the preparations, as he would have had to, if the Magazine had been chosen.”
Had this, Emmy wondered, been one of the general’s reasons for rejecting the alternative possibility of the well-fortified, stonebuilt Magazine? She swiftly banished the thought, as unworthy and disloyal. Sir Hugh Wheeler was a good and upright man, an experienced commander, who had fought with great distinction in the Sikh wars. … He would never have put his own convenience before the safety of those for whose lives he was responsible. There were a great many, she knew. Cawnpore contained a large civil and business community and numerous Eurasian Christians; in addition there were the railway engineers, who had been preparing an embankment in readiness for the approaching line from Calcutta, as well as the wives and families of the 32nd Queen’s, left behind when the regiment was posted to Lucknow. Lady Wheeler had estimated that there were at least three hundred women and children, for whose defense, she had added gravely, the general could muster fewer than two hundred trained British soldiers—some of them invalids—and perhaps two hundred able-bodied but untrained male civilians.
“My husband is doing his best with the means at his disposal, Mrs Sheridan,” she had insisted. “A place of refuge and shelter for the European noncombatants is the first essential, if there should be an outbreak of mutiny here. And this he is providing, with a parapet to surround it and guns for its defense.”
Emmy pressed a hand to her burning eyes. Before the birth of little William, she had gone with Harry and her sister to see the preparations being made. They had watched gangs of coolies toiling in the hot sun to construct an earthwork parapet on the rock-hard ground—a parapet little more than four feet high its mud walls two to three feet thick. Anne had looked at the singlestoried hospital building, with its thatched roof, and shuddered.
“Thank God,” she had whispered, a catch in her voice, “that we shall not have to stay here, depending on this place as a refuge!”
The Nana Sahib’s hateful young advisor, Azimullah, had called the entrenchment “The Fort of Despair” someone had reported wryly, and even Harry Stirling, who liked and admired General Wheeler, had admitted that it was aptly named.
“Memsahib … ” The door curtains parted, to reveal the bearded face of the old bearer. “I bring you tea, as the nurse-sahiba is asking. Also,” he was beaming, Emmy saw, as he set down the tray on the table at her bedside, “a letter, Memsahib, which has come by the dak from Lucknow.”
He placed it in her hand and Emmy’s heart missed a beat, only to sink, when she looked at the envelope and saw that the writing on it was unfamiliar.
“From the Captain Sahib?” the bearer asked eagerly. “Is the Captain Sahib back in Lucknow?”
She shook her head regretfully. “No, it isn’t from the Captain Sahib, Mohammed Bux, it is from Lucknow, so perhaps there may be news of him. Wait, I will read it.”
She unfolded the flimsy sheet of paper, her fingers trembling in their haste, looking first at the signature. It was from Sir Henry Lawrence’s secretary and it ran: “Sir Henry has asked me to tell you that your husband has been summoned to Lucknow by telegraph, in order to assume command of a volunteer cavalry force, now being raised for our defense. With this appointment goes the brevet rank of lieutenantcolonel …” Emmy stifled a little cry, the words blurring before her eyes. Then she read the message aloud to Mohammed Bux, and turning the page, saw that Sir Henry himself had added a paragraph, “In view of the alarming news from Meerut, my dear Mrs Sheridan, I thought you would like to know that my telegraph was despatched before the mutiny of the native regiments and that your husband is, in all probability, on his way back to us now. I learned of your continued presence in Cawnpore, quite by chance from Sir Hugh Wheeler, the reason for which is, I understand, cause for congratulation, and I offer you mine most warmly.”
The kind old man, Emmy thought, her throat stiff, the dear, kind old man! With all the anxieties he was facing in Lucknow, he had still found time to endeavour to set her fears at rest … she must write at once, to thank him and she must write also to Alex, so that he would find the letter waiting for him when he returned.
“Bring me pen and paper, Mohammed Bux,” she requested eagerly. “I have letters to write.”
“To the Cap—to the Colonel Sahib?” the bearer suggested and she saw her pleasure and relief reflected in his lined brown face.
“Yes, of course to the Colonel Sahib,” Emmy assured him. “Oh, I’m so thankful to receive this news! I was so afraid, I …” Mohammed Bux brought her the writing materials she had asked for and she thanked him, smiling through her tears, as he laid a book on the bed, on which to rest the paper, and opened the lid of the inkwell for her. “I must tell him about his son. He will come here, won’t he, to see his son? Even if …” fear returned, full force, to torment her. The country would be unsettled, she told herself uneasily. When the fact that Delhi was in the hands of the mutineers became generally known, the roads—even the Grand Trunk Road—would be dangerous and Alex might have to brave those dangers with only Partap Singh and his two syces. Oh, but surely they would have given him an escort, if he had left Meerut before the native regiments rose? If he had left on the 10th—
last Sunday—he would be well on his way by now and, once he reached Lucknow and received her letter, he would come to her, of that she was certain. He would come to take her and the baby to Lucknow and … she bit her lip. She would have to be ready to go with him. The doctor had told her that she was weak and run-down; he had left instructions with Mrs Miller to make sure that she did not overexert herself and had told her that she would need at least three weeks complete bed-rest before she put a foot to the ground, but all that was changed now. She must be ready when he came.
“Mohammed Bux,” she said, with sudden resolution. “Send ayah to me with my clothes. I will sit up to write these letters.”
“Atcha, Memsahib,” the bearer acknowledged dutifully. “But nurse-sahiba is saying that you must rest. I do not think—”
“Send ayah,” Emmy ordered. “Now, at once. And do not tell the nurse-sahiba. When the Colonel Sahib comes, I must be ready to go with him.”
She was dressed and seated at the table, busy with her letters, when Mrs Miller came in carrying the tiny, blanket-wrapped bundle that was her son. “Here he is, ma’am,” the woman began. “Here’s the poor wee soul to—” she broke off with an exclamation of dismay. “Mrs Sheridan, have you taken leave of your senses? Don’t you remember what the doctor said? Back to bed with you at once, ma’am, if you please or I won’t be held responsible for the consequences!”
Emmy rose, with dignity, to her feet. “I’m perfectly all right, Mrs Miller, I assure you. If you will give me William …” She held out her arms for the child and the midwife reluctantly acceded to her request.
“It’s not right, ma’am,” she objected. “Truly it’s not, and the doctor will blame me for permitting it.” She became conscious of the change in her patient’s demeanor and her homely face relaxed its professional sternness. “You look as if you’d received good news, ma’am. Is it that you have heard from the captain? Is that why you’ve decided to defy the doctor and get up?”