Johnson knew he was vulnerable on both counts, and did not even glance at Hervey for support. He braced up instead, and turned away.
Armstrong smiled a little. ‘You know, when I kept that place at Datchet I was of a mind to take him on if ever, as they say, you’d dispensed with his services.’
Hervey relaxed, and smiled too. ‘That might come as a great shock to him.’
‘Oh, I’m not so sure, sir. It’s water off a duck’s back to our Johnson. He knows his worth, that’s one thing.’
Hervey shook his head. ‘And that’s the problem with half the poor beggars who showed for the shilling. They thought so little of themselves.’
Armstrong took out his pipe. There was no time to light it, but he could prick at the bowl in the familiar way. ‘It’s a queer place this. Most of these ’Indoos as does for us sleeps on the floor, and yet I don’t see ’em cringe for all of that. And as for them Skinner’s men, you’d think they were maharajahs the way they carry themselves.’
‘And what conclusions do you draw from these observations, Sar’ntMajor?’
Armstrong paused. ‘Let’s just say that when this lot is shot over the first time, we’ll have our work cut out.’
Hervey hoped profoundly he was wrong. ‘We can thank God at least that by all accounts the Burmans are not famous fighters.’
Armstrong tapped out his pipe on his boot. ‘Ay, well we’ve heard that afore.’
Hervey knew it, but it was time they began resaddling, and he stood up. ‘A couple of leagues at most, and then we’ll see what their spirit is when I tell them our orders.’
Armstrong rose too. ‘Ay. Crossing yon river’ll leave ’em in no doubt we’ve work to do.’
The Karnaphuli river, at the point where they were to pick up the Bandarban road, was not quite as Hervey had imagined. In one respect it was familiar enough: tall rain trees interlocked their canopies so that the sun could not penetrate in any strength, just as in his memory of the Chintal forest. They were indeed at the edge of the great jungled wilderness that stretched as far as Ava itself, and this much his maps told him; but the Arakanese had described the place as a ford — or that, at least, had been the translation through Bengali. If it was a ford, it was a deep one. Hervey sat contemplating the river for some time. Had he come to the wrong place? The native Arakanese guides seemed sure enough, and after all they had merely had to follow the river upstream to where the only road crossed it. This here was undoubtedly a road of some importance, for there on the far bank was a little ferry — whose ferryman would, in any case, be able to confirm it was the place. Then it tumbled to him: a ford it might be, but for whom? The elephants and their mahouts now wading into the middle from the far side were his probable answer. Their day’s work done, it was the hour for a cooling soak, and here, it seemed, was the timehonoured place where they came. To a mahout it was indeed a ford.
Some of the troop-horses became unsettled at the sight and smell of the half-dozen elephants, although they were hardly a novelty. Some of the dragoons likewise showed their unease as they saw the river reach half-way up the flanks of the great beasts.
Hervey put on a brave face. ‘Well, the current’s pretty slow. Now’s as good a time as any to try it.’ It was probably true. Swimming was the last drill they had to practise, and although they would first have tried it without saddles, they were not nearly so encumbered as they might have been. And the little rope ferry would take the galloper guns and the farrier’s packhorses.
‘I’ll get them to start waterproofing then, sir,’ said Armstrong. ‘D’you think we can get them elephants to stand sentinel downstream in case we have a few fallers?’
‘I think we may. We’ll take a rope across, too.’
It took a full half-hour to make waterproof the firelocks and cartridges, binding carbines and pistols with oilskin and wrapping cartridges in waxed paper. When they were ready, Hervey had the troop remount and face the river in line, then he rode to the centre and cast his eyes left and right. ‘I have just two things to say, and you will do well to remember them. First, your horse will swim across without any help from you. All you need to do is to let him have his head and sit tall in the saddle. Second, your carbine: you will have no greeting from me if you emerge from the river without it!’
Hervey paused to let the message be understood. Some of the NCOs added their own warnings, though muttered.
‘Those elephants will stand in line in case anyone is unseated,’ Hervey went on, and then, slowing his delivery to emphasize the point, added, ‘which there is no reason to be!’ He nodded to Serjeant Collins.
Collins rode out of the ranks, halted and drew his carbine from its bucket and clipped it to his crossbelt in the approved fashion. Then he took the coil of rope, the end of which the serjeantmajor had secured to a tree, looped it in the crook of his right arm, took the carbine in the same hand and rode straight for the river’s edge.
‘See how he holds the carbine up to keep it dry,’ called Hervey, glancing left and right again along the line.
All eyes were on Collins. He rode straight into the river as if it were no more than a field of barley, his horse not hesitating a fraction. For half a minute the water came no higher than Collins’s toes, then his knees, and then there was no longer a footing, and the horse struck out into the peculiar lunging motion that was its swimming method, head pushed forward flat on the water.
‘See how he has let his horse have the rein, and keeps his back straight and carbine hand raised,’ continued Hervey.
For another half a minute Collins’s horse paddled powerfully until its feet touched bottom again.
‘When the horse first gets a footing he’ll lurch a bit until he gets his stride. Don’t let your weight be thrown forward or you’ll unbalance him.’
The water was now back to Collins’s knees, and soon to his toes, and then he was riding up the shallow bank and out of the river.
‘Serjeant Collins will secure the rope, and that shall be to save the unwary. But I say again, I do not expect any one of you to have recourse to it!’ He nodded to Armstrong, who took up post at the entry point.
‘Right, you dryfeet! From the left, begin!’ barked the serjeantmajor.
Armstrong had numbered off the NCOs carefully so that there would be a good spreading of experience. First in went Private French. ‘No harder than driving a pair, lad,’ said Armstrong encouragingly. ‘Probably a lot easier.’
French rode in confidently.
‘Keep that carbine up. He’ll be up to his neck in no time.’
Next went Corporal Mossop. ‘Go on, Eli. Show ’em how it’s done.’
Mossop was by no means the best, but Armstrong knew he would be better for a good word.
Then came Mole, the hireling, and Shepherd Stent. Then Corporal Ashbolt and Harkness, and Corporal McCarthy. ‘Look careful there, Paddy,’ said Armstrong with a smile. ‘It’s not the River Jordan.’
‘No, sor, it isn’t. And I was baptized an infant already.’ McCarthy had crossed rivers before, many a time, and by no means as warm and sluggish as this, but always on his feet. He looked gingerly ahead, but he had been trained, and he trusted his officers.
A dozen more entered, as regularly as those in front clambered out on the far bank. Johnson took his own mount and Hervey’s second across, knotting his reins and holding his carbine high, and with no more trouble than if he had been crossing the parade ground. Parkin and a clutch of Warminster pals came next. Armstrong eyed him fiercely: ‘Parkin, you keep that carbine hand up, mind!’ That was going to be the least of his worries, Armstrong knew, but this was not the time for second thoughts. He fixed Corporal Tait, following, with a glare. Tait knew what he meant, and nodded. And if there was a better corporal than Tait in the saddle then he wasn’t in the Sixth. Then came Wainwright and Rudd, eager to ride up close to Parkin, but Armstrong held them back awhile (it was no use too many in the stream at once).
Parkin was doing well, sitting upright if a little hunched, st
ruggling manfully to keep his carbine up by his shoulders. Corporal Tait was alongside, Wainwright and Rudd a couple of lengths behind. In less than a minute they would be in the shallows. And then the very worst happened, so quick that none saw it coming. The ferry rope, straining to hold the raft with its two galloper guns, snapped with a crack like a rifle. It startled the horses on the near bank and even unsettled the elephants. The raft swung free as if propelled by a paddle, and bore down at once on the swimmers.
There was nothing they could do. Tait was struck first and knocked clean from the saddle, but he managed to grab the side of the raft. Then it hit the packhorse carrying the goats. The horse lost balance, and the current, though weak, began to take the drowning animal towards the elephants, the goats bleating frantically. Then the raft swung round and caught Parkin, still struggling manfully to keep his carbine dry. He disappeared beneath the big teak logs with a shout of ‘Jobie!’
Jobie Wainwright did not calculate. He threw himself from the saddle towards the raft, but he fell well short. He had swum many a time in the rivers and ponds about Warminster, but the weight of all he bore was too much, and he too sank like a stone. Corporal Tait threw his crossbelt and carbine onto the raft and slid below after them. Armstrong likewise threw off all his equipment and coat and raced powerfully to the middle of the river, bellowing at Rudd to stay in the saddle. Serjeant Collins plunged in from the far bank astride his gelding, and Shepherd Stent dived headlong after him. Hervey shouted for the remainder to stand fast and then put his own horse into the river. The Skinner’s daffadar struggled to hold the galloper guns on the raft as it swung towards the rope which Collins had paid out.
Tait surfaced gasping, struggling desperately to bring up his man. Armstrong reached him first and managed to pull up Wainwright’s head. Collins was close enough now to reach out and grab hold of his crossbelt. Tait, exhausted, seized the rope, coughing and trying to catch his breath. ‘Parkin, sir! Just under!’
Armstrong dived once more, then Shepherd Stent. After half a minute Armstrong came up for air, then Stent, and then both went under again. It seemed an age. The raft went over the rope, but the mahouts were already moving the elephants towards it. Up came Armstrong and Stent together, gasping worse than Tait, and with a lifeless Parkin. Hervey grabbed his crossbelt and took the weight from them so they could both make for the rope. And in a minute it was all quiet, the river empty but for two of the elephants, the others having edged the raft to the far side.
The surgeon had been the last out. He had never so much as ridden his horse through a dewpond before, but he had put him straight at the far bank as soon as he had seen cause. And now he worked frantically to revive Parkin, even as the crowding knot of men saw there was no life in him. A full five minutes did Ledley pound at Parkin’s chest to have him cough up the water. Never would Hervey have believed a surgeon had such faith. But it was to no good. At length he rose, and pronounced him dead.
Two hours it took to dig Private Parkin’s grave. The troop carried only a few entrenching tools, and Hervey wanted it deep, so that the scavengers at the jungle’s edge should not disturb Parkin’s resting place. The pals — Wainwright, Spreadbury and Needham — dug alone for the first hour, until finally they relented and let Rudd, the ‘milliner’, join them. Needham cried quietly for a lot of the time. He and Parkin had lived cheek by jowl on Warminster Common since they could remember, longer even than had Jobie Wainwright, for he had come with his mother from the parish when he was full five years old. Only once did anyone speak, when Spreadbury, exhausted, sat down and said, ‘Danny should have been let off sick.’ But Jobie had simply taken up the pick and quietly explained, ‘No, Billy. We’s all soldiers now.’ And the others had accepted it because Jobie had said it. But even Jobie could not rest, for he had told Parkin’s mother he would look after him, and he hadn’t. What would he say to her? She was as good a mother as any there was on the Common.
When it was done, the pals brought Parkin’s body, wrapped in his cloak, and laid it beside the grave, where the rest of the troop was drawn up, hatless.
‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Hervey spoke the words with sad assurance. Though the rubric of the Prayer Book required that the office was not to be used for any that died unbaptized, he had not been minded to enquire of Parkin’s status. He wanted to commend a stout-hearted dragoon to his maker, and to show to the others that the Sixth honoured its dead. ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
The words settled on the troop like a chill evening mist. All movement ceased.
Then Hervey read Psalm 90, with its promise of a longer span of life than Parkin had enjoyed, and, probably, than many of those gathered could expect; there were few grey hairs in a regiment, and even fewer in a troop. Afterwards came Saint Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, long and bewildering, and the ranks were not now so statue-like. Hervey sensed it, and hammered out its concluding questions: ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ And he raised his voice in authority at its final command: ‘Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.’
Hervey nodded to Armstrong, who in turn nodded to the pals, who took the ends of the knotted reins by which Parkin’s body would be lowered into the earth.
‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery,’ began Hervey again, as the pals played out the reins. And then, the body at rest and the reins recovered, Hervey threw a handful of earth into the grave, and the pals did likewise.
‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground …’
Hervey had always liked the appellation ‘brother’ applied to a fellow dragoon, irrespective of rank, and hoped that it would strike the same chord beyond just the pals. For it was the strength of the regiment that a dragoon would fight for his friends — would lay down his life, even — and that those friends, those brothers-in-arms, numbered many more than might ordinarily be the case. Indeed, at its principled best, the regiment was a body of friends, whose connection was no more than the sharing of the Roman ‘VI’ in their headdress.
The rest of the Order for the Burial of the Dead Hervey abbreviated, leading next the Lord’s Prayer — and hearing a respectable rendering of it by many of those present — and then pronouncing the Grace. But ‘Amen’ could not be sufficient to a military occasion, and so he ended with a peremptory ‘Parade dismissed.’ He turned away and closed his prayer book. It had been the first time he had opened it in many months.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. THE LEAFY LABYRINTH
Later
The noise of the river crossing, and then the solemnity of the burial service, had masked the peace of a rainforest afternoon. From dawn until late morning there was a procession of sound. Some of it, such as the birdsong, was entirely obvious in its origin, but much of it was far from so. Cicadas were easy to tell, like crickets in some vast echo chamber, but what started quite evidently as a chorus of cicadas would then metamorphose in the strangest way, so that it was not clear whether the cicadas had changed their tune or whether another creature had taken it up in imitation and begun its own development. Sometimes, especially at night, the noise seemed as if it were made by machine — hammering and drilling, and rasping like a saw drawn across wire. And all the time there was whistling, whooping, growling, screeching, snarling — terrible other-world noises that could chill the marrow even as the flesh ran with sweat. But not in the afternoon. Then, as in the early hours of the pre-dawn, the forest became progressively silent, as if every creature had flown or slid away. This
was the time that Hervey knew, the time he had ventured a little way into the mysterious jungle. It had been silent that afternoon in Chintal, five years ago nearly, when the raj kumari had tempted him. And it had been silent that night when he had crept with the rajah’s sowars through the tangled blackness to fall upon the mutineers, so imprudently asleep at their post. Hervey had not heard the rainforest’s fullthroated chorus. He knew of it only from what men had told him, usually men wide-eyed with the telling.
With little more than an hour to darkness, there were many things for officers, NCOs and dragoons alike to attend to; but Hervey was determined to speak to them about the march ahead, and indeed of the ultimate purpose of that march. He therefore ordered the campfires to be built high so that he could address the troop in full view of them, even if they for the most part would be in the shadows.
It was a joy to watch Armstrong at field duty. This time of the day was his, and he knew precisely how to fill it. His eye missed nothing, nor his ear. His whip swished, jabbed and pointed this way and that, without ever making contact with a man, and certainly never a horse. An NCO considered himself well worthy of his rank if he escaped wholly without censure. Hervey could think himself in Spain once more, when death was an almost daily affair, and as he sat alone beneath a magnolia tree he found it easier than he had expected to lay aside thoughts of Private Parkin, and to apply himself instead to his maps. Such was the worth of a serjeant-major of Armstrong’s line and service.
‘Five minutes, sir,’ said Armstrong.
Hervey looked up. The light was failing and he could no longer make out the detail on his maps, such as it was. ‘Very good. All’s well?’
‘As you’d expect, sir. They’re just getting on with things. Surgeon’s got his work cut out trying to stop ’em pulling them leeches straight off, though.’
Hervey nodded. ‘A very noble effort of his with Parkin.’
Armstrong sighed. ‘It was scabby luck: Parkin of all people to be in its way.’
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