by V. A. Stuart
Emmy cradled her little son in her arms. “I’ve heard of him, Mrs Martin, although not, alas, from him yet. But I’ve reason to hope that he’s on his way to Lucknow and that he’ll come here for me—for us—much, much sooner than I expected. So you see I had to defy the doctor, as you call it, because I must be fit and well and ready to go with him when he arrives, mustn’t I?”
“Well, yes, ma’am, I suppose you must,” Mrs Martin conceded. “And I’m glad, real glad that you’ve had good news. All the same, if you’re really set on being fit and well by the time the captain gets here, I think you’d best let me tuck you up in bed again, just for another day or two. Give the—give Master William his feed and finish your letters and then back to bed … will you do that? We can ask the doctor tomorrow, when he calls, if he’ll let you sit up in a chair for a few hours.”
Reluctantly, Emmy gave in. When William had been returned, protesting weakly, to his cot and the letters given to Mohammed Bux to take to the dak office, she allowed Mrs Miller to help her back into the hot confines of the big double bed once more and lay back wearily against the plumped-up pillows. She was neither fit nor well yet, she was forced to admit but, if she did a little more each day, no doubt her strength would return. Even if Alex reached Lucknow on Sunday, which was three days hence, he would have duties to perform and his new command to attend to, so that the earliest she could expect him would be Monday.
A week later, on May 21st, General Wheeler ordered all noncombatants in the city and garrison of Cawnpore to take refuge inside the entrenchment and to sleep there at night. There had been no news of Alex and Emmy obeyed the order unhappily, bringing the baby, her ayah and the bearer, Mohammed Bux, with her. Four guns—nine-pounders—had been mounted, manned by British gunners, and inside the entrenchment all was confusion as people of every colour, sect and profession came crowding in. Officers’ ladies, noncommissioned officers’ wives and their children found themselves sharing the cramped accommodation inside the hospital and barracks with civilians, Eurasians and Indian servants and, with each hour that passed, more arrived, some on foot, others in buggies, palki-gharis and carriages, to add to the confusion and the overcrowding. The heat was intense, the noise almost unbearable; children wailed and mothers complained and Emmy, appalled by the disorganization, was tempted to return to her own bungalow.
“If anything makes the sepoys rise,” she said bitterly to the young wife of a Native Infantry officer, with whom she was sharing one of the rough wooden mess tables in the hospital building, “it will surely be this demonstration that we have been herded in here because we are afraid of them!”
The girl opposite agreed tearfully. “My husband,” she confessed, “has been ordered to sleep in the lines with his men, as proof that we do trust them. And they say that General Wheeler and his wife are remaining in their house, with all the doors and windows open, as further proof … and the brigadier and Judge Wiggins are doing the same.”
By evening, the confusion had sorted itself out a little and Emmy, having managed to get William off to sleep it last, left him in the ayah’s charge and went with some of the other officers’ wives to listen to the band, which was playing in cantonments. Rumor was rife; tales of unrest amongst the sepoys and in the bazaar were bandied about, only to be contradicted or superceded by others still more alarming a few hours later.
The following day a detachment of about eighty men of the 32nd Queen’s arrived from Lucknow, together with a squadron of irregular cavalry under Captain Fletcher Hayes; the former, Emmy learnt, sent by Sir Henry Lawrence to aid in their defense. Anxiously she questioned them, at the first opportunity and was distressed when Captain Hayes told her that, to the best of his knowledge, Alex had not yet arrived in Lucknow. The irregulars left next morning with orders to pacify a district said to be in a state of insurrection and not long afterwards came a report that the sowars had mutinied, killing their commander. The report added to the despair of those who must nightly leave their homes and endure the heat and discomfort of the entrenchment.
There were now eight 9-pounder guns mounted at various strategic points behind the mud parapet and it was known that, in response to General Wheeler’s request for aid, the Nana Sahib had sent a force of his own troops, amounting to over four hundred men, both cavalry and infantry, with two guns, under the command of his personal bodyguard, Tantia Topi. To this force were entrusted the Magazine, with its store of light and heavy cannon, ammunition and small arms, and the Treasury, which contained £100,000 in coin and bullion.
General Wheeler appeared less harassed after their arrival; he went regularly among the sepoys, by whom he had always been held in high regard, visiting each post and picket and continuing to sleep in his undefended residence, determined to display no lack of trust for as long as this was humanly possible. To those who urged him to destroy at least the powder in the Magazine, he returned an adamant refusal—to do so would indicate a lack of the trust he was trying so desperately to maintain. The Nana, he insisted, had made himself personally responsible for both ordnance stores and treasure.
For Emmy, as for most of the other women, the days of waiting seemed endless and now, to add to her fears for her husband’s safety, little William’s condition had begun to give cause for anxiety. By day, when she was permitted to return to her own bungalow, she did what she could for the frail little boy, trusting no one but herself to care for him. Cool sponges, to reduce the temperature he seemed always to be running, had little effect; his tiny body was red and covered with the scarlet spots of prickly heat but neither the ointments the doctor prescribed nor gentle bathing with spirit wrought any improvement. He was able to take very little in the way of nourishment, lacking the strength to suckle and her attempts to feed him with a spoon ended in dismal failure, however patiently she tried. His fretful crying, which had worried her during the first two or three nights spent on the veranda of the hospital, had now ceased and he lay, in silent apathy, in his cot, emitting no sound, his breathing so light and shallow that at times she had to place her ear to his chest, to make sure that he was breathing at all.
Even Mrs Miller, who had returned to her own healthy and numerous brood, when consulted, could suggest no remedy for William’s malaise.
“I’m afraid the poor wee soul is not long for this wicked world, ma’am,” was her verdict, delivered sadly, and she added, in a wry attempt at consolation, “Although, for all we know, Mrs Sheridan, he may be better off than we are if the truth were told. If we’re to be kept cooped up in that awful enclosure for very much longer it may be the death of us all … and without a shot being fired at us! My husband says that, if the sepoys had been going to rise against us, they’d have done so already and I believe him. His men have volunteered to go to Delhi to drive out the mutineers and they’re to be publicly thanked by the general, I believe. Between ourselves, Mrs Sheridan, the ones I don’t trust are those sly monkeys the Nana’s sent to guard the Treasury. They’re more likely to rob it than the sepoys are, I’m quite sure!”
There were others who shared this opinion, Emmy knew. Certainly the sepoys were showing no evidence of disaffection and the whole garrison had been heartened by the 53rd’s offer to march on Delhi. She sighed, blinking back the tears, as she knelt beside William’s cot. “Please God,” she prayed silently, “oh, please God help us to get away from here before it’s too late for this poor child. …“The baby, as if he had heard her, turned his big, lackluster eyes on her in mute and sightless appeal. She rose and went to the shuttered window, unable to bear the sight of his suffering.
But when the festival of Id, which marked the end of the Moslem period of fasting, had passed and there had still been no rising, the Cawnpore garrison began to cherish fresh hope. The first of the promised reinforcements from Calcutta arrived—a company of the 84th Queen’s Regiment and a small advance party of the Madras European Fusiliers, a Company’s regiment from Fort George. Sir Hugh Wheeler, assured that the main body of the Fusiliers
was on its way to him, sent all the new arrivals and the eighty men of the 32nd Queen’s on to Lucknow, and despatched bullock carts and elephants toward Allahabad to assist in establishing a convoy system which would hasten the arrival of the next batch of reinforcements.
Before leaving, the officer commanding the 84th passed on the welcome news that the governor-general, Lord Canning, was making strenuous efforts to obtain reserves of British troops. He had recalled regiments from Burma and Persia and sent fast ships to Singapore, with orders to intercept all troop convoys en route from the Cape to China and direct them, instead, to India, so that any sepoy rising might be dealt with swiftly and summarily.
Wheeler was jubilant when still more encouraging news came in, via the electric telegraph, from Lucknow. The commander-inchief, General Anson, hampered by lack of transport, had nonetheless reached Kurnal, seventy miles from Delhi, with a force of six thousand. There, unhappily, he had been stricken with a fatal attack of cholera and General Barnard had been appointed commander-in-chief in his stead. Despite this unexpected change in command, the Kurnal Brigade, the general at their head, had already left for Delhi and, marching from Meerut to meet them, the 60th Rifles and two squadrons of the 6th Dragoons under Brigadier Archdale Wilson, were reported to have crossed the Hindan River, inflicting a heavy defeat on a force of mutineers which had come from Delhi to oppose their crossing.
That evening, as the news was circulated, the band in cantonments played to a relieved and greatly heartened audience. Emmy, valiantly throwing off her cares, joined in the joyful singing of patriotic songs and in the final, belated tribute to the queen, whose official birthday had not been celebrated in Cawnpore on May 24th. Alex, she told herself, had probably joined the Meerut force for its advance on the Hindan—the force which had struck the first blow against the Delhi mutineers. At least its victory was proof that the Meerut Brigade had not been annihilated, as those first terrible bazaar rumors had claimed. … She sang the last verse of the National Anthem with a fervent prayer of thankfulness in her heart and then turned, in surprise, when someone called her name from the darkness behind her.
“Yes,” she began uncertainly, “Who … ? ” The voice was familiar, a woman’s voice that she knew well, and yet she could not place it until its owner stepped into the glow of the lamps ringing the bandstand.
“It is Mrs Sheridan, is it not?” The woman was tall and thin-featured, with greying hair and pale, almost lashless blue eyes, dressed in a crumpled, dust-covered gown. She looked tired and oddly defeated and Emmy, who had always gone in awe of her in the past, dreading her sharp tongue and arrogant manner, stared at her in puzzled recognition.
“Mrs Chalmers! But you … I thought you were in Adjodhabad, you and the colonel. And Lucy, too, of course. What are you doing here?”
“Lucy and I are fugitives,” Mrs Chalmers answered tonelessly. “We had to make our escape from Adjodhabad during the night, with nothing but the clothes we stood up in, when my husband’s sowars broke out in rebellion. They killed him, in front of my eyes, as he was coming to warn us … they shot him and when he fell from his horse they—they hacked him to pieces with their sabres. I saw them; there was nothing I could do.” She shivered and Emmy, sick with pity, put an arm about her shoulders.
“Don’t talk about it, Mrs Chalmers,” she begged. “It will distress you. I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry. If there is anything I can do, I—”
But Mrs Chalmers seemed not to have heard her. She went on, in the same bleak, expressionless voice, “We hid in a cupboard in the bungalow, Lucy and I, and the sowars searched for us. But the servants—heaven praise their courage and loyalty—told them we weren’t there and then they helped us to escape, when it was dark and the mutineers had gone. We were on foot and alone and then we—we met your husband, Mrs Sheridan, and he—”
“Alex … you met Alex? I don’t understand—where, how did you meet him? He was in Meerut.” Emmy’s heart was thudding wildly, her throat so stiff she could scarcely get the words out.
“He came with a small party of horsemen—natives, some of them. Pensioners, I believe he said, and two young officers. They were on their way to Lucknow and they heard about the mutiny, so they came and rescued as many of us as they could.” Mrs Chalmers mentioned several names, all of them familiar to Emmy. “The magistrate, Mr Lee, was in his courtroom. He had barricaded himself in, and the mutineers or the townspeople, I’m not sure who, set the courthouse on fire but they managed to get him out. And then they brought us here.”
“Here! Oh, Mrs Chalmers, is he … is Alex here?” It was too much to hope for, Emmy told herself, but she clung to the hope until Mrs Chalmers shattered it with a headshake. “No, he went on to Lucknow. He said he was overdue there and left at once. We were too exhausted to go on with him but the men went, four of my poor husband’s officers and Mr Lee.” She broke off, looking at Emmy in some dismay. “Does he not know that you are here? Oh, but of course,” the tired eyes lit briefly, as memory returned, “he told me you had gone to Calcutta. With your sister and brother-in-law, I think he said, so that your baby could be born. But you, you’re not—”
“My baby was born here,” Emmy told her. “He was premature; that was why I could not go to Calcutta.” The lamps round the bandstand were being extinguished and those who had been grouped about it during the concert started to move, slowly and with evident reluctance, towards the entrenchment. Recovering herself, Emmy took Mrs Chalmers’ arm. “We sleep inside the entrenchment, Mrs Chalmers, in the hospital. If you come with me, I’ll find you a place to sleep, you and Lucy, on the veranda where it’s a little cooler than it is inside. I’m afraid it’s very crowded but one gets used to that and we are permitted to go back to our own bungalows in the daytime. I’ll be able to find clothes for you and give you meals tomorrow.”
She looked about her, seeing only a pale, thin girl in a torn and bloodstained dress, who looked through her with the blank, unresponsive stare of a stranger. Lucy Chalmers was a girl of barely eighteen, she remembered, gay and lighthearted and an incorrigible flirt. Surely this could not be Lucy? She drew in her breath sharply. “Where is Lucy, Mrs Chalmers?”
“She is standing beside you,” Mrs Chalmers said, without resentment. “You didn’t recognize her but that’s understandable. She’s very shocked, you see, and it’s made her ill. She was so fond of her dear father and seeing him meet his end as he did was too much for her. Come, Lucy, my dear child. Mrs Sheridan is going to show us where we can sleep.”
The girl moved forward with listless obedience, but without a word and Emmy, hiding her feelings as well as she could, led them into the entrenchment, where she gave up her charpoy to them and herself lay down on the wooden floor at its foot.
That night the sowars of the 2nd Cavalry rose. Followed by the native artillery and by the 1st Native Infantry, they made for the Nawabganj, first moving their families from the lines into the city. The Nana’s troops offered no opposition and the exultant sowars broke into the jail, set fire to the public buildings, rifled the Treasury and finally took possession of the Magazine.
The sound of musketry and the sight of smoke and flames rising from burning buildings warned those in the entrenchment what was afoot, long before the alarm gun was fired. Sleep was out of the question and the women waited, tense and apprehensive, but the two remaining sepoy regiments were reported to have paraded at 2 A. M., fully accoutered and obedient to the orders of their officers. Dismissed to cook breakfast, however, the 56th marched off to join the mutinous regiments in a frenzy of looting and incendiarism in the city, first escorting their officers to the entrenchment.
Only the 53rd stood firm, the men continuing to squat over their cooking pots in the lines. Their native officers were in the act of entering the entrenchment to protest their loyalty when, apparently fearing that they were about to attack, a gunner on the northeast side of the parapet opened fire, sending a hail of grape into their lines. The sepoys leapt to their feet in shocke
d surprise and all but eighty of them fled, in an angry, frightened mob to join their comrades in the city. The eighty who remained shouldered arms and, in an extraordinary display of loyalty, marched up to General Wheeler and pledged themselves to fight in his defense—a promise echoed by their officers, which all were heroically to keep. Deeply moved, the old general saluted them and directed them to take their places behind the parapet.
A day of terrible uncertainty followed, as officers from the mutinous regiments came hastening into the entrenchment, accompanied by a few civilians who had made perilous journeys from the city and the Nawabganj. Each brought his own alarming account of what was going on but no officer had, it seemed, suffered violence at the hands of his own men and several had been protected by their men from the mobs of released convicts and budmashes now roaming the streets. The sepoys were looting but they were not killing and the majority were engaged in removing guns and ammunition from the Magazine, as if in preparation for a march on Delhi.
The day wore on and no attack was launched against the British garrison; only the distant rumble of artillery and spasmodic volleys of musketry told them that the danger still existed and hopes rose when, by nightfall, the expected attack had still not taken place.
Next morning, to the heartfelt joy and relief of the defenders, came news that all three native regiments, with an artillery train, were six miles away, at Kalianpore, on the road to Delhi.
“That is what the Nana Sahib told me they would do,” General Wheeler said, when making this announcement. “Now all we have to do is hold firm until reinforcements reach us from Calcutta … in a few days, perhaps, if all goes well.”
Prayers of thanksgiving were offered by the chaplain, the Reverend Edward Moncrieff, and Emmy, kneeling in the crowded hospital with the rest, offered her own glad thanks for the knowledge, so providentially brought to her, that Alex was alive and well.