Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  Piroo’s hoarse voice sounded just above his head. “Sahib, where are you?”

  He handed Robin up the bank, scrambled after him, hauled Mrs. Hatch out, and followed Piroo through the tongue of woodland. The familiar cart stood at the edge of the fields; he would wander for ever in this cart, but it was better now. He understood all that had happened and recognized his enemies. He climbed in, smiling softly and flexing his hands. Two people were crouched in there already; Caroline was one, the other must be Sitapara. Now they were all crammed into the little space, and Piroo closed the flaps. The atmosphere was thick with patchouli and sharp with the taint of betel. Piroo hissed, and the bullocks tugged at the yoke.

  They sat strained against one another and for half an hour did not speak, while the cart creaked slowly through the fields. The three women were tense in their places, but Rodney leaned back, relaxed and comfortable, because he knew no soldiers would be out after them. He couldn’t tell Caroline why without telling her about Prithvi Chand, and then she’d look at him and he’d be ashamed. Still, it was for her sake and Robin’s, and she’d thank him one day.

  The cart stopped at last, and Piroo muttered, “Monkeys’ Well. Not a sign of anybody.”

  Sitapara whispered, “Wait a bit. Get off the trail.” She put her face forward, and they leaned in close to her as she continued in French, “I’ve told Piroo to take you to Chalisgon. You must rest there until the child has recovered some strength. I wish I could see him in daylight. Mademoiselle says he is beautiful. Piroo knows the way. I have friends there. They will shelter you and care for you well. They do not love the Rani there any more than here, and you will be safe.”

  Caroline, opposite, was holding Robin. She said, “Thank you, Sitapara; you have been good to us. Don’t risk yourself any more. We have a rifle. You go back to the city, and God bless you.”

  “I will go--in a minute. But first, here is some money, a hundred rupees in Company’s silver. Take it, I have plenty. Repay me when you can, at interest if you like. But the best payment you can give me is to have the Rani hanged. I was beginning to suspect what they were doing. There was a fat Calcutta merchant here. I know him, and know he never leaves Calcutta except on the very biggest affairs. Then suddenly, at the end of the Holi, the Dewan put me in the dungeons. They must have found out I sent you the message to Bhowani. He let me out on Sunday. Now, remember, stay in Chalisgon until the child, and all of you, are strong again--or the country and the heat will kill you more surely than the Dewan. Hasten slowly! Rely on Piroo, who is not such a helpless old fool--as I hear you’ve found out already.”

  Rodney fidgeted, and she turned on him fiercely. “Espèce de chameau! Have sense! You will die if you do not trust somebody. Trust me, and Piroo, and the people of Chalisgon, and you will save yourselves.”

  Rodney licked his lips. Shyamsingh’s body lay crumpled at the bottom of the well a few feet away, and the hamadryad would be close by. This was an unhappy place, peopled with ghosts and snakes, and Sitapara belonged here. When she got out to go back to the city, perhaps he could say he had to get out too for a minute--follow her out of earshot. It would be easy and pleasant. She must be in it; this must be a trap. Piroo would have to go, of course, before they reached Gondwara, or he’d betray them for certain; that little man would have to be watched, he was too damned clever with the silk square--a dangerous man, and deceptive like all Indians. The one vital thing was to get through to Gondwara quickly. Prithvi Chand had spoken the truth there all right; there was nothing but truth in the unsteady tremble of his voice. Besides, no Indian could fool him, Rodney; he had a superhuman faculty of insight and he knew when they were lying, which was always.

  Sitapara said, “I think you’re safe now. I came with you because I have only to show myself and no Kishanpur soldier would dare to search the cart--in spite of my imprisonment. I’m known.” She added the last words bitterly.

  She was up and out of the front before Rodney could prevent her. He moved to follow, but Caroline touched his arm; he shivered and sank back.

  Piroo and Sitapara mumbled a little outside; he caught a few words. “You know what to do?”

  “Yes. Jai ram, sister.”

  “Jai ram.”

  Piroo knew what to do, did he? So did others. He began to fumble with his belt, making sure that the bayonet frog and scabbard were on it. The cart moved; he clasped his arms round his knees and closed his eyes.

  Treacherous, murderous swine. The first and last task now was reconquest. The English were conquerors here, not friends, and it was a ghastly mistake ever to forget it. There must be no peace and no quarter until every last Indian grovelled, and stayed grovelling. A hundred years hence the inscriptions must be there to read on the memorials: Here English children were burned alive in their cots, and English women cut in pieces by these brown animals you see around you. DO NOT FORGET. A hundred years would not be enough to repay the humiliation. That old devil Sher Dil was probably shot in a fight over loot; Lachman and the rest must have run away. How had he ever been fool enough to waste a worry on them? There’d have to be Indian servants and Indian sepoys again, but by the Lord Jesus Christ there’d be a difference. The next few months would lay the new foundations, granite and rough and cold. There’d be British soldiers pouring in from overseas. They’d hear what had happened in Bhowani and Kishanpur, and they’d pay it back a thousand fold. Rodney would lead them. He’d find the words to tell them about Bhowani. He’d make them see the blood, hear the screams, feel the chilling horror of treachery.

  He was a professional fighting man. It was no use letting the red rage blind his thinking. Victory first, then the long repayment; no victory, no repayment. If there were no foreign countries in the world, and England were left alone, she could crush these people however long it took. But there were other countries; France and Russia would be overjoyed, and could menace so much that England would not dare spare the troops for a complete reconquest.

  Prithvi Chand had been speaking the truth; he knew that. If Gondwara had not gone yet, probably nothing south of Gondwara had gone. The Bombay and Madras armies must be waiting to see what happened in Bengal. Gondwara might be the key to India; if it held fast, the rest of India held, and the reconquest of Bengal would not take long. If it turned, the mutiny flooded the rest of India, and England might not be given time for the gigantic task of re-establishing herself. It wasn’t only Bombay and Madras, either; he did not know what had happened in the north--what the Sikhs had done, what Lalkot had done. There must be scores of princes sitting on the fence and waiting, and watching Gondwara.

  He ran quickly over the British troops in the Gondwara garrison. They ought to be enough to hold it, providing the Bengal regiments were disarmed and all the sepoys shot. If the sepoys were allowed to keep their arms there would be a catastrophe which would destroy not only Gondwara but, in the end, all the little British communities in India. Sir Hector was new to the country. He was a strange man; perhaps he’d be fool enough to trust the sepoys; perhaps he’d already blown them all from guns. One couldn’t tell, with him.

  Rodney saw his own road clear in front of him. He had to bring his party to Gondwara, trusting nobody, unsleepingly cunning and ruthless, balking treachery with guile. When he got there he could tell Sir Hector the truth. He alone could do it; messages would be useless--they’d never be delivered, for one thing. And it was no use getting in a panic and killing himself by hurrying. He was weak and ill and had to get strong. It would take the Bhowani mutineers time to organize themselves, collect stores, join the Kishanpur Army, and move south. And there were so many British troops in Gondwara that the sepoys there would be lunatics to rise until the mutineers were at the gates.

  Strategically, the enemy’s best plan would be to capture Gondwara at, or immediately after, the onset of the monsoon. The rains would effectively hinder British relief operations until sometime in September. By then the rebels could hope to have the whole of India in their hands. Armies c
ould not march through the rains, but treason could, and the Native armies in Bombay and Madras outnumbered the British components nearly as heavily as they did in Bengal.

  A picture of the Rani’s face came to him, and he was suddenly certain that the centenary of Plassey would mean a great deal to her. On June 23, 1757, India’s native rulers bowed to the English: on June 23, 1857, she would try to make the English bow in their turn. And the date fitted in with the strategic factor, unless the rains came early.

  He’d see how long his party took to recover, and then he’d make out his plan in more detail. For the time being it was enough to know that there was no desperate urgency to move, while there was a desperate urgency to rest. He’d have to pretend to trust Piroo and the peasants of Chalisgon.

  He settled back, wishing Caroline could see that he was smiling at her across the darkness under the canvas. That was silly; he wouldn’t dare to smile at her if he thought she could see. Her knee was touching his; perhaps she didn’t know whose knee it was in this welter. Mrs. Hatch was rocking with the motion of the cart and snoring heavily, pushing out her breath through fluttering lips.

  Caroline he could worship. He would plan for her and protect her; he would kill for her, and never tell her. At the last, when they were safe, he’d tell her a little something of what he’d done, and she’d be proud of him. He couldn’t do anything of it, though, without her well of strength; he’d draw on that and bend his new fierce mind to use it in the right way, to kill others and save themselves. There were so many visions--of red flames and reeking flesh. If only God would keep away the other ones, of her body, and not confuse him. Surely he’d been through enough. That was the kind of thing that could drive him mad. The link between him and her was that between a sinner and a saint, not between a man and a woman. He would earn her sweet praise, one day, but this other was torture. He concentrated on thinking of her face as it had been when she carried Robin up the road into the fort, and at last went to sleep.

  20

  The doors inside the headman’s house were open, and from where Rodney sat in the front room he could see into the little back room. There Robin sat on the floor, holding a wooden toy tiger a villager had carved for him, and played, with quick movements of hands and head. He was stronger in body now and his wound had healed over, but he hardly ever spoke, and he whimpered when Rodney came near him. If Rodney picked him up to caress him, he hung stiff in his arms, with panic-stricken eyes. He liked to nestle against Caroline’s shoulder or on Amelia Hatch’s ample lap. Rodney’s lips hung down at the corners, and he turned back to look round the front room.

  Mrs. Hatch sat on a low block of wood in the women’s corner by the empty hearth. She had recovered from the burns and bruises suffered in the chute--how many days ago? Thirteen; that had been the night of May the thirteenth. Each night at dark he carved a nick in the stock of his rifle --Shyamsingh’s rifle; today was May the twenty-sixth. Time had passed quickly while they dozed and ate and dozed again. Of the first week here he remembered nothing but sleep. He was sure there was not another firearm in the village or he couldn’t have closed his eyes. The villagers were a cowardly lot, afraid of his rifle, and obviously awaiting a chance to dispose of the English refugees without getting hurt themselves. So he ate, and found his strength again, and pretended to be weaker than he really was. In fact he felt well, strong and merciless and master of himself; soon he’d show these swine he was their master too. He knew where the strength came from which quivered in his waiting muscles, and enabled Robin to play with his toy tiger, and animated Amelia Hatch’s cockney jokes. They three had slept, but the fourth had not; warm milk held to his mouth, firm hands on his head when he awoke gasping with fright in the night, the eternal eyes. The three of them had sucked her dry, and she was grey-white, hollow-cheeked, and her eyes burned like lamps. He knew and would not forget. He would raise her on a plinth of ivory and worship her the rest of his life. He must not fail her.

  Piroo too had been tireless, but of course Piroo had ends of his own for being so smarmy and helpful.

  The headman’s front room was square and low. Plastered mud and cow dung made a smooth floor. Apart from Mrs. Hatch’s log seat and a stack of winking pans and jars in the hearth, there was no furniture. There was no furniture anywhere in the house except a large gimcrack wardrobe in his own room and a few projecting shelves in the room where Robin and the two women lived. Here the floor and walls were bare; woodsmoke had blackened part of the ceiling-- there was no chimney--and spidery shreds of soot clung to the rafters above the hearth. The room was full, as it had been nearly every evening at this hour when the village notables gathered to gossip and smoke. He knew them all by now, and ran his eye calculatingly over the two groups.

  In the far corner were the women: Amelia Hatch, Caroline, and the headman’s wife--the last a brown version of Amelia, with the addition of a small gold nose ring and a caste mark. All three wore white saris. Mrs. Hatch’s dress had fallen to pieces days before and her black buttoned boots, prominently displayed, were wildly incongruous under the oriental flow of the sari.

  The semicircle of men squatted barefoot on their hunkers round a smoky tallow lamp hung in a bracket on one wall. Rodney sat against the wall with the loaded and primed rifle across his knees. Next to him was the headman, a square youngish man with a heavy face and dark skin. Like the other village males, he wore only a white cloth tied loosely round his loins and up between his thighs, and fastened in front. Next came Karmadass, the village bannia--general merchant and moneylender--who was gross and greasy-skinned; he was the same stamp of man as that other Rodney had seen in Bhowani and Kishanpur, the one Sitapara thought was concerned in the mutiny; all of that trade were cast in one mould. Then the priest--bald, flap-eared, a white caste mark on his forehead and the sacred thread across his shoulder. Next, two wizened old men almost indistinguishable from each other, with bent backs and rheumy eyes; they were twins, and might from their appearance also have been Piroo’s elder brothers. Piroo was last, against the wall opposite Rodney; a corner of the black silk square peeped out of his loincloth.

  A low murmur of conversation filled the room; when speaking among themselves the villagers used a local dialect Rodney could scarcely follow, but they could also speak and understand a little Hindustani. It was very hot, and the door from the front courtyard was open; out there the headman’s animals breathed, champed, and stamped their hoofs, and seemed to be inside the house. The cheap hookah on the floor in the middle of the semicircle had a pottery bowl and a straight bamboo stem which each man swivelled round as his turn came to smoke. The water bubbled in it; Rodney exhaled and drew in his stomach muscles: he felt much better. It was time to be going.

  He took another puff at the hookah, dragging the acrid smoke through his funnelled hands so that his lips would not defile the mouthpiece. He asked an idle question; the talkative member of the pair of twins replied. The fat bannia said pleasantly in halting English, “You are speaking werry good Hindustani, sahib-bahadur.”

  He replied coldly in Hindustani. “As good as your English, I expect, babu-ji.”

  Perhaps the fellow was only trying to make polite conversation, and show off his English. Perhaps, buried in these wilds, he didn’t even know that it was an insult to speak English to an Englishman unless the latter first used that language to him--for it implied that the Englishman was a newcomer to India, or had not troubled to learn Hindustani. It didn’t matter; the fat slug had better learn manners and might as well begin now. He looked intelligent in a crafty way. He was probably the one who’d sent that young fellow after him when he went out to kill a deer; the meals were endlessly the same--chupattis and curried lentils--so Rodney had taken the rifle and tried to get some venison. Someone must have told the young devil to go with him. It might have been the headman, looking so innocent there, or Piroo the cunning one, Piroo the thug. That didn’t matter either, because the young fellow was dead, bayoneted to death and buried under leaves
in a bear’s cave up the valley. They’d never find him, never know what happened to him. He’d snivelled and begged for mercy, and said he’d only come to point out the game trails--but he’d had an axe, and a nasty treacherous look.

  Rodney rubbed his hands, remembering it with suppressed glee. How straight he’d kept his face when he told the headman that the young man had left him to come home, that he had no idea what had happened to him after that, or where he’d gone! “Perhaps a tiger got him,” he had added sympathetically, craftily.

  The bannia flushed and stammered an apology. The headman said gently, “You are safe here in Chalisgon, sahib, absolutely safe, until you choose to go.”

  Rodney did not reply. That was a favourite remark of Caroline’s, and the headman copied her, saying the same thing when it was quite uncalled for. It was very suspicious; that line of soft talk wouldn’t help the fellow when the time came to deal with him. With half an ear he listened to the subdued mutter from the women opposite, obscured as it was by the bubble of the water in the hookah. The headman’s wife was leaning back, cackling with soft laughter and holding her sides. He watched her lean forward with another of her eager questions--about English clothes, servants, food, perfumes, housekeeping expenses, feminine hygiene, obstetrics, care of children. The catechism had gone on for twelve days, and no end was in sight. She found a vast humour in every answer; probably she didn’t believe half of them, and laughed in admiration of the white women’s fabulous ingenuity. She understood Mrs. Hatch’s explanations better than Caroline’s, though Mrs. Hatch hardly spoke a word of Hindustani; Caroline’s English world was on another planet, while Mrs. Hatch’s differed only in degree. The headman’s wife was, besides, genuinely awed by Caroline and treated her as she would a visiting queen or an embodied goddess.