by M. M. Kaye
‘It cannot be happening,’ thought Lottie. ‘It cannot be true …’
‘I don’t see ‘as ‘ow we can ‘old out much longer, sir,’ said Conductor Buckley to Lieutenant Willoughby who commanded the Delhi Magazine. ‘Them perishers ‘av brought scalin’ ladders—’ His words were barely audible above the howling of the mob and the incessant rattle and crash of gunfire.
They had been holding the Magazine since morning, and now the sun was moving down the sky again. Was it only four o’clock? Nine of them, against a howling, yelling mob of thousands. Nine of them to man ten guns—
‘Scully says the train’s laid, sir!’ yelled Conductor Buckley. ‘Any sign from the Meerut road yet, sir?’
Young Lieutenant Willoughby ran to the river bastion and strained his eyes for a last look down the hot, empty road where the heat-haze danced and shimmered under the brazen sky. ‘No. They are not coming. Perhaps they are all dead. We cannot wait any longer.’
He looked up at the blue of the sky, his eyes calm and youthful in the sweating, dust-grimed, powder-blackened mask that was his face, and then glanced at the swarming thousands who clambered in, monkey-wise, over the walls, hemming the defenders into the last narrow square of ground.
‘We shall take a good many of them with us,’ said Lieutenant Willoughby. ‘All right, Buckley. Give him the signal to fire it.’
The ground and the buildings and the very sky seemed to rock and reel and sway to the appalling crash of sound that silenced the savage roar of the maddened city, and a vast cloud, rose-red and beautiful in the level sunlight, lifted up above the domes and minarets; above the groves and gardens of the city of the Moguls; reaching up higher and higher into the still air and spreading out like a blossoming flower on a tall white stem.
It hung there for hours, an ephemeral memorial to gallantry. But as though the sound of the explosion had been a signal, the sullen, hesitating sepoys within the Main Guard turned upon those who had taken refuge there, and Lottie, who had run down from the wall at the sight of Edward, saw her mother fall without a sound, a hole through her temple, and saw a sabre slash down through her husband’s head, laying it open almost to the shoulder.
She had screamed then, and fought to go to him, but someone had caught her arms and dragged her struggling and shrieking to the battlements, and then hands were gripping her wrists and she was being lowered down from the wall, swaying and turning against the hot stone, and screaming for Edward. The makeshift life-line of hastily knotted belts broke, and she fell and struck the hard ground and rolled into the ditch, the breath knocked out of her body, to be caught again and dragged on and up the steep escarpment, running and stumbling over the rough ground to plunge headlong into the tangled thickets of the Kudsia Bagh …
The crash of the explosion shivered through the hot stillness and rocked the Flagstaff Tower on the Ridge, where the terrified families from the cantonments had been crowded together in helpless confusion all that long day, waiting for news and straining their eyes through the heat-haze towards the city and the empty Meerut road. The women gasped and flinched to the hammerblow of the sound, while their servants wailed aloud and the children shrieked excitedly as a white column of smoke shot up from the distant city to spread into a slow rose-red corona that hung above the mangled bodies of the thousand dead who had died in the explosion of the Magazine.
‘We can’t wait here any longer,’ said a haggard-faced officer pacing the Ridge. ‘What in hell’s name are they doing in Meerut? They cannot all be dead! For God’s sake, why don’t we do something to help those poor devils in the city? There’s still the river arsenal to draw on. We could have made some sort of a show, instead of just leaving them to be slaughtered!’
‘Don’t be a fool, Mellish! We’ve got to think of the women and children. As it was, we had to weaken the city garrison in order to keep sufficient men here for their protection. We can’t try any “forlorn hopes” while we have their safety to consider.’
‘Then why didn’t we send them off to Karnal as soon as we got the first news? Why the devil don’t we send them now? Every moment that we hesitate increases the danger for them and for us, and most of all for those who are trapped in the city. No one seems to have done a dam’ thing in Meerut, and no one is doing anything here - except young Willoughby who has evidently had the guts to blow up the Magazine. Surely anything is better than standing by like this and watching the few men who might remain loyal losing all confidence in us? Look—! What’s that - there’s a cart coming up the road! Is it news at last?’
A bullock-cart creaked and jolted slowly up the road in a cloud of dust, to halt by the Flagstaff Tower where the sinking sun illuminated its contents with brutal clarity: the slashed, stiffening, blood-stained bodies of half a dozen British officers, thrown in as carelessly as though they had been so many bales of straw. A challenge flung at the Ridge by the triumphant city. A challenge that would not be taken up for many days.
The moon gathered light as the last of the daylight faded, and those who had stood all day on the Ridge of Delhi, hoping and fearing and waiting for the help from Meerut that never came, prepared to leave at last. ‘It will be dark in half an hour,’ said the Brigadier, his eyes still straining towards the empty Meerut road. ‘The women had better go, and they will need protection. You had all better go while the road to Karnal is still open.’
The glare of burning bungalows in the cantonments made a second sunset in the sky as carriages and dog-carts and men on foot and on horseback streamed away into the gathering darkness, to begin that long torment of flight through a hostile land during which so many were to die. The Brigadier waited until they had gone, and then with the last remaining officer on his staff he faced the sullen remnants of his command. ‘Sound the Assembly,’ said the Brigadier, and heard the familiar bugle-call ring out in the silence.
A single figure, a sepoy of the 74th Bengal Native Infantry, answered the summons; standing stiffly to attention, lonely and obedient in the gathering dusk. The only one to remain faithful to his salt out of all those serried ranks of men who twenty-four hours ago would have obeyed that call.
The Brigadier’s shoulders sagged tiredly, and he turned at last and rode away from the Ridge, leaving the deserted cantonments to the night and the looters, while behind him, high above the darkening city, the last of the daylight and the first rays of the moon lit a fading cloud that still hung above the shattered Magazine and marked the only decisive stand that had been made in all that terrible day.
Winter had not spoken again during that evening ride and Alex was too occupied with his own thoughts to notice the fact. He was sorry for her, but it occurred to him that there were going to be a great many other things to be sorry for soon. He could not send Niaz to the lines any more, and his various sources of information in the city and the surrounding towns and villages were becoming less and less easy to get in touch with. They were afraid of being seen near his bungalow, and what news they brought was inconclusive and disturbing.
He looked up at the pale segment of moon floating high above the veil of dust that blurred the horizon. A flight of cormorants making for Hazrat Bagh jheel drew a thin dark arrowhead against the opal sky, and a flock of purple pigeons circled above the jostling roof-tops of the city. He wondered how Niaz and Yusaf were faring? It would be far hotter out on the plain than in the cantonments, and they would have had nothing to eat or drink since before dawn. Ramadan, when it fell in the hot weather, was no mean test of endurance, and the knife-wound in Niaz’s back was not yet fully healed. ‘I shall have to go myself tonight,’ thought Alex. Night work was all very well for Niaz and Yusaf, who could spare the time to sleep by day, but it came hard on Alex, who could not.
He drew rein before the Residency gate and spoke for the first time in almost an hour. ‘When do you leave for the hills?’
‘On the twenty-second,’ said Winter listlessly. Her anger had left her and she felt curiously apathetic.
‘Which gives you a week in
which to get there,’ said Alex. ‘Eight days to be precise. That should be enough. I expect I shall see you before then. Good night.’
He turned his horse and cantered away in the direction of his bungalow and Winter went on under the arch of the gateway past the stately, salaaming figure of Akbar Khan. An hour ago she would not have acknowledged that salutation. An hour ago she had thought him a murderer and had hated both Alex and her husband because they would not hang him for murder. But now, in the grip of the apathy that had taken hold of her, she was not sure. Perhaps Nissa had died a natural death after all.
The high, white-walled rooms of the Residency were unexpectedly cool after the sultry heat of the plain where even the air of the late evening held a breathless suggestion of an open furnace. The lamps had been lit, the doors and windows thrown open and the paths about the house watered to lay the dust. The scent of wet earth was as strong as incense, but though it permeated the lamp-lit rooms and filled the house with a clean fragrance, it could not disguise another scent: the cloying smell of musk and betel nut that belonged to the fat woman who lived in the bibi-gurh. So Yasmin had been in the house during her absence. That was unusual. Winter was well aware that the woman visited Conway’s rooms by night, but she had never known her to come into the main part of the house before. But tonight she had obviously been there; in the drawing-room and the morning-room. Even in Winter’s bedroom.
Conway was in the drawing-room, sprawled on the sofa with a glass of brandy in one hand. He was wearing a thin native-style shirt over white cotton trousers, and both were dark with sweat. It was not late, but he was already unmistakably drunk. There was a silver-mounted hookah on the floor, and the cushions of the sofa were indented as though someone had recently been sitting beside him. Winter had not seen him dressed in such a fashion before, and she did not know if it constituted his usual garb in the hot weather, or if he were slipping back into a way of life that his marriage had temporarily interrupted. She had told him once that if the woman Yasmin entered the house - she excepted his private rooms - she herself would leave it, and she wondered now what had made Yasmin bold enough to return. Should she make a stand now and carry out her threat?
She surveyed her husband’s flushed, vacant face and sodden, sweat-soaked body, and realized that it was useless to talk to him when he was in this condition, since he would not understand a word she said. The apathy that had descended upon her an hour ago pressed down on her with an almost tangible weight. She had not slept at all during the previous night and now she was very tired. Too tired to care about Conway and his fat, musk-scented mistress. It did not matter any more. Nothing mattered any more. Perhaps it was true that their lives were plotted out for them and none could avoid their fate. ‘What is written, is written …’
Someone moved in the shadows behind the lamp that stood on the table at Conway’s elbow. It was the pale girl with the yellow hair whom Winter had seen before in this room. Her grey eyes were wide and frightened as though it were she, and not Winter, who was looking at a ghost. Had she died in this house? Was that why something still held her there? ‘They are killing the mem-log …’
Conway said thickly: ‘Well, what ish it? Wan’ anything?’ … and there was no one behind the lamp. Only a white curtain and a vase full of yellow canna lilies, and the shadows …
Winter slept soundly that night despite the heat and the creaking of the punkah. As soundly as Zeb-un-Nissa who lay in the Mohammedan cemetery and did not hear the yelling of the jackal-packs who slunk among the graves. As exhaustedly as Lottie who lay asleep, her thin slippers and frilly skirts torn and ripped by thorns and stained with dust and blood, in a curtained ekka whose kindly owner had found her and her two companions crouching in a ditch by the roadside, and had befriended them.
‘I go to Lunjore, and with all speed,’ said the driver of the ekka. ‘Delhi will be no place for a man of peace for many moons, and I have a brother in Lunjore with whom I will abide until this madness is past.’
38
Alex and Yusaf returned to the bungalow in the dark hour before dawn and by different routes, but Niaz remained invisible. He was reported to be still suffering from fever and unable to leave his bed.
Alex had hoped to sleep late but he was awakened at sunrise by Alam Din. ‘Huzoor,’ said Alam Din softly, ‘there is a red kite caught in the thorn tree by the city road.’
‘Damn!’ said Alex wearily. ‘Damn and blast! Oh, all right. Acha, Alam Din, main jaunga.’
He shook himself awake, and twenty minutes later he was riding through the crop-lands in the direction of Chunwar. The mile-long road that led across the open plain to the city boasted a solitary thorn tree that grew near its edge some two hundred yards from the cantonment end, and this morning there was a cheap paper kite such as children fly caught up in its scanty spiked foliage. A vivid scarlet thing, visible from some considerable distance.
Gaily coloured kites flew all day and at all seasons in the sky above the city, and a strayed one that had broken its string was frequently to be found tangled among the branches of trees on the plain. Alex did not pass the thorn tree and barely glanced at it. He took a narrow side-path that skirted a field of mustard, and checking the Eagle by a culvert where the elephant grass grew high and a wild fig tree threw a patch of shadow, he dismounted as though to tighten a girth.
There was a rustle in the grasses and a voice whose owner remained invisible spoke in a whisper that was barely audible above the creaking of a distant well-wheel and the indignant chittering of a striped squirrel:
‘There is word in the bazaar that the pultons have risen in Meerut, and have slain all the Angrezi-log and ridden on Delhi, which has fallen also. It is said that they have proclaimed Bahadur Shah as Mogul and put all feringhis to the sword.’
‘When?’ asked Alex, wrestling with a strap.
‘Yesterday only. The news was told at dawn by a fakir at the steps of the Pearl Masjid.’
‘It is not possible,’ said Alex. ‘Delhi is far.’
‘Do not the very birds of the air speak to the bairagis?’ whispered the voice.
Alex said: ‘Is there aught else said?’
‘Nay. What need of more? The city hums like a hive.’
‘Will they rise?’
‘Who knows? There be many budmarshes in the bazaars, but the Maulvi’s men call upon them to hold back and to wait for the Word. It were better that none of thy people were seen in the city today. Keep them close. If even a stone were thrown there is no knowing what might follow. Thou knowest the temper of crowds. If they see blood, they run mad like jackals.’
Alex said softly: ‘Go back and bring me word tonight. I will ride by the tomb of Amin-u-din at sunset.’
‘I will try. But I am afraid - afraid. If it were known, they would tear me in pieces!’ Alex could hear the man’s teeth chatter, and he laid a handful of silver coins in the dust by the rim of the culvert and said: ‘There will be fifty more tonight,’ and mounting again rode on in the general direction of Chunwar.
He made a circuit of the crop-lands and returned to the cantonments by way of the rifle-range, riding for the most part at a leisurely walk that necessitated a considerable effort of will, and it was well past eight o’clock by the time he reached the Residency.
He found the Commissioner still abed and naked save for a width of thin cotton cloth wrapped about his waist in the manner of a Burmese lungi. The room reeked of musk and stale spirits, and the green-tinted chiks over the closed windows toned the light to a twilight dimness. Alex’s foot struck against a cluster of little silver bells such as often adorn an Indian woman’s anklet, and he found it an effort to restrain a grimace of disgust.
‘Well?’ demanded Mr Barton sourly. ‘What is it now? More bees?’
‘I hope it may turn out to be no more than that,’ said Alex curtly. ‘There is a tale being circulated in the city of a rising in Meerut and in Delhi. It may be entirely untrue, or there may have been some trouble there that has
been grossly exaggerated by rumour. But the story is that the regiments in both places have mutinied and killed all the Europeans, and that Bahadur Shah has been acclaimed as King.’
‘What rubbish!’ said the Commissioner angrily. He sat upright and the movement appeared to be painful, for he groaned and put a hand to his head. He glowered at Captain Randall and said: ‘Why, Meerut’s crammed with British troops. Crammed with ’em! - at least two thousand. Strongest garrison in India. Poppycock! It’s only another bazaar rumour.’
‘Perhaps, sir,’ said Alex shortly. ‘The point is not so much whether it is true, as that the city believes it to be true. Such a rumour is bound to give rise to a good deal of excitement, and I should like, with your permission, to put the city out of bounds to all Europeans until the excitement has had time to die down.’
‘Why?’
God give me patience! prayed Alex, setting his teeth. He said calmly and pleasantly, as though reasoning with a backward and fractious child: ‘It takes very little to start a riot among people who have been systematically worked up into a state of excitement and tension as these have been. With this sort of rumour flying round the bazaars, a white face in the city might lead to stone-throwing. And as you know, sir, with a mob that is only a short step from murder. We cannot afford any unpleasant incidents at the moment. In a day or two at most we should hear if there is anything at all behind the rumours, and if there is not, the excitement will die down. May I take it that you agree to putting the city out of bounds?’
‘Oh yes, I suppose so,’ said the Commissioner ungraciously. ‘Don’t believe a word of it, but— Well, go on, go on! - do what you like about it and leave me in peace.’
Alex did not linger. He did not return to his own office but went instead to the Commissioner’s where he wrote briefly, swiftly and to the point, using the Commissioner’s official paper, and then returned to the darkened bedroom with pen and inkwell to demand the Commissioner’s signature. Having seen the chupprassi leave with the sealed documents, he asked if he might see Mrs Barton, but Winter had gone out.