He had two options. To pace his mare so that, if the halftroop and the galloper guns had made slow progress (perhaps not yet even arrived at Chintalpore), they did at least reach them; or else he could make all speed at once in the hope of meeting the troop in time either to intercept — or at least catch up — the boats. Hope was not a principle of war, he reminded himself, yet surely the second option was the only one?
Now he would do something he had never done before. He would push his horse until it fell of exhaustion. Had he contemplated the act coolly and at length, he might have balked at it. Yet now, scenting the distant possibility of a kill, he felt nothing. He unfastened the holsters from the saddle and flung them and their pistols into the river. He unbuckled his sabre — a fine tulwar from the rajah’s armoury — and hurled that into the river too. And when the time came — when he needed just another mile from his mare — he would throw off shako and tunic, and discard the saddle to ride, as Xenophon prescribed, bareback. The subedar followed his example: everything — his own sacred tulwar included — he cast like Hervey into the waters of the Godavari.
After two hours at a truly prodigious pace, their horses tiring desperately with every stride, Hervey was suddenly inspirited by the distant appearance of the lancer troop. He pushed his little mare back into a gallop to close the remaining quarter of a mile, and kicked up so much dust that the troop was taking guard as he hallooed them. ‘Have you seen any boats on the river?’ he shouted.
The rissaldar looked confused. Hervey tried again, this time in Urdu. Still there was no reply. He cursed and looked at the subedar. ‘In heaven’s name ask him if he’s seen boats on the river — a dozen, maybe more; big boats, big enough to carry the nizam’s guns!’
With a concoction of English, Urdu and Telugu he eventually established that a small flotilla that might answer thus — certainly unusual in appearance, with several craft roped together, and having an uncommonly large number of people aboard — had passed them by almost an hour ago. Hervey’s face lit up at the news. He explained what he wanted and soon the rissaldar’s face was lit up too. The troop’s officer trotted back down the column to relay the intention, and the sowars’ faces took on the same aspect. Hervey wanted one more thing, however: paper and pencil. The rissaldar obliged, handing him his sabretache, and in less than a minute he had scribbled his message for Locke. It read simply, ‘Nizam’s daughters on river. Shall intercept. Make speed to Chintalpore in case elude me. There is spy in palace who knows our last conversation. Hervey.’ He gave it to a dafadar with instructions to ride for Jhansikote at all speed.
Changing horses to a big country-bred which tried to bite his arm as he mounted, Hervey hastened to the head of the column. ‘Very well then, Rissaldar sahib, let’s be about it!’
Though the rissaldar knew not the precise meaning of Hervey’s Urdu, the sense was clear enough, and, with an appeal to Shiva, he put his thirty men and the guns straight into a gallop.
Sooner than Hervey expected, they caught up with the flotilla of shallow-draught vessels taking the most powerful guns in southern India deep into the territory of the rajah. The sight filled him with a powerful sense of violation, and a glimpse into the eyes of the sowars behind him would have revealed the same. They had not hated these men from Haidarabad before. Though most of the nizam’s soldiers were Mussulmans they were brothers nonetheless. Perhaps it was the outrage of sibling betrayal which now fired these Hindoos of Chintalpore, for when they saw the boats they quickened the pace without orders. Soon they were in a flat gallop, the guns bouncing behind the bigger country-bred geldings. As they drew parallel and then overtook the boats which, here on the curve of the river, were much closer to the sowars’ bank, the nizam’s gunners realized what was to come, and there was at once commotion where before there had been only torpor. The guns themselves were covered by canvases — not that they could have been fired from such flimsy craft even had they been ready — and some of the gunners sought the meagre protection of concealment beneath them.
The sowars unhitched the galloper guns before the wheels had even stopped turning, swinging them at the boats with frenzied heaving. They opened fire so quickly that Hervey thought they must have been loaded ready. He urged them on with the most sanguinary imprecations. He wanted no measured action, only the most ferocious assault: what might these sepoys of the nizam be capable of if they were not subdued rapidly and with the greatest violence? The rissaldar, suffused with that same resolve, and without waiting for orders, spread his men along the bank to deal with those who were, willingly or otherwise, about to enter the water. The galloper guns found their mark easily. Although the Godavari, even before the monsoon, was wide at this point (perhaps as much as two hundred yards), it was a placid — even a sluggish — stream, and the guns needed no elevation. Against river barges a single four-pound shot did the most fearful destruction (they were just beyond the range of canister), and with targets that stood practically still, the business of relaying was nothing. The first to strike home carried away the head of one of the sepoys, leaving his body standing for several seconds before it toppled forward and over the side. Blood spattered about the others and sent them into a frenzy. An officer tried to rally them to some resistance, but he fell to a carbine ball, coolly discharged from the saddle by a diminutive Tamil who was not prepared to wait for the sabre. The others were soon loading theirs, but next the second galloper gun fired a corrected shot, low, which smashed through the gunwale and sent a torrent of splinters as lethal as grape across the deck of the third barge, leaving not a man standing for’ard. Sepoys on the fourth barge began a brisk return of fire, but to little effect, and Hervey ordered the jemadar to have the sowars direct their carbine fire at this and the following barges, which were much closer to the bank, to suppress the resistance until the galloper guns could play on them in turn.
The lead barge was now ablaze, the first gun having fired one of its precious fused shells into the shrouded cargo, and sepoys were soon jumping from the sides. Some could not swim: they thrashed wildly, calling upon Allah until the Godavari claimed them. Some struck for the distant bank, but a dozen sowars put their horses into the river after them. There could be no doubting who would win the race. Others, accepting their fate or hopeful of mercy, made for the nearer side. Sowars waded in to meet them, slinging lances over the shoulder to draw sabres instead, and the shallows soon ran red — brackish though the river was. Some of them, impatient of waiting for the remaining fugitives to leave the barge, swam their horses towards the craft to assail the would-be survivors with the steel point of the ten feet of bamboo. The second barge was now sinking, its gunwales below water, its sepoys, seeing the slaughter of the first, unable to commit themselves to the fate attending whichever course they chose. Those on the third made no attempt at resistance, climbing instead into the water on the cover-side, holding on desperately, doubtless hoping that the barge would somehow drift out of reach of the guns. But it edged instead into the second, which was wallowing midstream. Both guns now turned on it. The first round struck just below the waterline, and the barge’s fate was sealed, if slowly. But the other gun still had one fused shell, and it took only seconds to have the vessel ablaze, forcing the sepoys finally to choose their fate. However, none were to feel the sabre or the lance’s point, for before the most resolute had made a dozen strokes the barge blew up, sending a fountain of matchwood higher than the tallest mathi trees on either bank. On seeing this the sepoys on the fourth barge began throwing down their muskets and jumping into the water. Hervey guessed that the powder was carried on just two barges, this and the third, and he shouted for the galloper guns to play now on the last two, whose sepoys were returning fire briskly but with almost no effect from behind the cover of the gunwales.
The guns were now fiercely hot, despite vigorous sponging, yet still their sowars showed no fear in serving them. Indeed, the jemadar ordered double charges and canister, believing he could just reach the nearer barge. Two disc
harges put an end to the volleying from behind the gunwales, allowing the sowars to fire with more measure at the hull. The third shot, perhaps finding some weakened part of the clinker-built side, stove in a dozen feet of timber just on the waterline. The barge began to list at once. Those sepoys who had not been hit by canister sprang up in dismay from behind the gunwales, only to begin falling again to the sowars’ carbines. And then the barge, under the weight of the two giant cannon — now exposed as the canvas covers fell away — turned on its side like some great beast of the river, the cannon plunging free of their lashings into the Godavari, and then rolled over completely before disappearing. All attention now turned to the last barge, but Hervey wished to make it a prize: the nizam’s guns would be of incalculable value in the rajah’s service, and the sepoys would surely have intelligence of the nizam’s intentions. But before he could make his orders clear to the jemadar, the sepoys began trying to stave in the timbers, their officers having at least determined that the cannon should be denied to Chintal. Hervey ordered the galloper guns to reopen fire at once with canister, and the sowars with their carbines, to try to prevent the destruction. Guns and carbines worked terrible havoc — men fell almost continuously for a full five minutes — but still the sepoys hacked away with whatever they could find. In another five they were dead or dying to a man, sixty or more of them. But they had done their work, and the barge began to settle in the water. In five minutes it would be gone. Silence now returned to the Godavari. Hervey looked slowly from right to left, up and down the river, along its banks and its shallows. He had seen butchery of this kind before — but never so fervently and efficiently done.
XVII. GOOD AND EARLY INTELLIGENCE
Later that morning
Hervey threw up violently. The slaughter at the river had been no greater than at Waterloo or any number of affairs in the Peninsula, but he had never seen men so drunk on blood. When the sowars had killed every last one of the nizam’s gunners they had turned in their frenzy on those they had killed first, until there was scarcely a body that had not had a limb sliced away or been several times impaled. He had tried to stop it, but it was futile. Had he not, in truth, encouraged it? He had shouted ‘no quarter’ when they came on them, for he could spare no quarter until the last barge was destroyed. None of the nizam’s men had held up their hands — except to Allah — and none had called for mercy. War was fury, not sport — victory the only consideration, was it not?
He now sat under a tree scribbling a second note for Henry Locke, out of sight of the river carnage. The rissaldar marched up as if on parade. ‘Sahib! We have counted all bodies,’ he announced. ‘More than two hundred, sahib!’
Two hundred: what did it matter? It wasn’t as if they were British, or even French. Just a lot of heathen natives. He would have slaughtered a hundred more to bring Jessye back. How the soul grew cold, he mused, even in so hot a place as Chintal.
‘What is it, sahib? Is sahib unwell?’ The rissaldar bent to take his shoulder.
This was absurd. He couldn’t see the bodies now. Throwing up because he felt nothing? ‘No, Rissaldar sahib — I am just a little winded still from the ride.’
‘Brandy, sahib?’
‘Yes, brandy would do very well, Rissaldar sahib.’
He took the canteen — water and brandy mixed, as reviving as it was slaking.
‘Take it all, sahib — there is plenty more.’
He took it all. Then he threw up a second time.
The rajah, like the King of Spain in his chapel when the Armada sailed, would do nothing but pray. To the exasperation of those courtiers who had not fled or given way to a debilitating panic, he remained inaccessible, ministered to solely by a sadhu. Hervey, sick with killing, full of brandy but unquestionably triumphant, stormed into his apartments in fiery resolve.
The rajah stared at him, eyes fearful.
‘Your Highness, the guns are now at the bottom of the Godavari. I shall ride tonight for Jhansikote and I urge you to follow as soon as you’re able. Your sepoys must see you. We do not yet have complete victory.’
The rajah expressed every degree of relief, gratitude — obligation, even. But he was reluctant to leave his capital. Not for fear of the enemy on the plains but for fear of what might be done in Chintalpore were he now to quit it. ‘I am convinced of the need for me to remain, Captain Hervey. And of my prayers in this place.’
Hervey sighed. How he wished for less of the pious inactivity of the Spanish king, and more the spirit of the English queen rallying her sailors. But no amount of reasoning could change the rajah’s mind. ‘With your leave, then, sir,’ he said at length before retiring.
He left the rajah’s apartments unsteadily, taking deep breaths to force out the brandy’s ill effects. But the air was heavy and gave him no relief. More than once he turned the wrong way in the labyrinth of marble. Where in heaven’s name were Selden’s quarters? Instead he found a door opening into the courtyard, the sun strong in his eyes, an overpowering smell of horses, donkeys, mules, bullocks, elephants, sweating bearers — almost making him throw up again. And there was the raj kumari, and all about her treasures being loaded into hackeries and yakhdans.
She showed no surprise at seeing him. She already knew of the affair at the river. As soon as firing began she had galloped one of her Kehilans straight to the sound of the guns. He seized her roughly by the arm. ‘What—’
‘My father sends me away; that is all you need know.’ She struggled free.
‘The danger to the palace is gone, but beyond the walls—’
‘I have no care. I take what is mine and leave.’
‘For where?’
‘You need not know!’
He seized her arm again, then the other, pulling her round to face him. The jasmine scent of loose hair drew him closer. He searched the sullen eyes for their secrets, but they yielded none. They never had. The same mastering urge as at the slaughter swelled again, a lust he would later revile just as much. He let go, turned about and walked away without looking back. Had he done so he would have seen her look of defiance turn to one of despair.
He saw the squatting shape as he turned the corner to his quarters. It was too early for a chowkidar to have taken post, and his senses returned with the recognition of danger. The figure rose in one easy movement and made namaste. The long black hair, falling loosely about the shoulders, the gaudy saree, the earrings, the bangles, the fat necklace hiding the Adam’s apple — the creature’s profession was unmistakable.
The hijda looked him up and down insolently. Hervey was close to scourging him. ‘May I speak with you, Captain Hervey?’ The English was heavily accented but confident, the voice that of neither a woman nor a man — and without the deferential ‘sahib’.
‘Of course you may speak,’ replied Hervey warily; ‘about what?’
The hijda looked at him as if to say he would not tell while they stood outside.
‘Come, man!’ snapped Hervey, only then realizing the incongruity of calling him thus.
‘Mr Selden,’ replied the hijda.
Instinct made him look about, but there was no-one to overhear. ‘Come,’ he said, opening the big teak doors.
Inside, the hijda glanced here and there in a sort of sneering approval, before pouting in the way the troupe had done that first night at the rajah’s banquet.
‘Well, come to it!’ demanded Hervey testily.
‘Mr Selden is most sick of the fever which comes and then goes again.’ The English was delivered in a modulating half-strangled alto.
‘Where is he?’
‘At our hijron. He is better cared for there than he would be here,’ he sang defiantly.
‘Why do you come here then?’
‘Because Selden-sahib wants very much to speak with you. He is too ill to come himself. I will take you to him.’
‘Very well — but not now. Be at the palace gates at three,’ he snapped, intending to keep him at a full arm’s length.
&nb
sp; The hijda made namaste as if playing to a fuller stage, took a peach from a bowl and bit into it suggestively. Hervey cursed him roundly, making him cackle like a bazaar harlot as he fled the room.
When the hijda was gone, Hervey lay with his arms outstretched on the great bed. A pair of collared doves outside his window were enjoying a vocal courtship. Before the female had finished answering the male, he was asleep.
He was awakened soon after midday by a bearer who shook him with all the resolve he would a sleeping leopard. ‘What in heaven’s name—’ He felt blindly for the sword that was not there.
The bearer was saying something but the Telugu made no sense.
‘He says that I would have words with you, Captain Hervey,’ came a voice from near the door.
Hervey got to his feet, as full awake now as he had been before he closed his eyes. ‘Miss Lucie!’ he exclaimed, blinking. ‘I had thought you were gone to Guntoor.’
‘No, indeed: it seemed to me the very best time to be in Chintalpore!’
Outside, the usual silence of the afternoon was broken only by a peacock calling from the menagerie, for all the world as if Chintal was a place of profound peace.
‘How may I help, madam?’ he tried.
Emma Lucie came to the middle of the room as the bearer left. ‘Soon after you were gone last night a hircarrah arrived from Calcutta with this letter.’ She held out a wax-paper package. ‘His orders were that he should deliver it only into English hands.’
‘And yours were the only ones to be found?’ asked Hervey, taking it.
‘As you see,’ she smiled.
‘You will excuse me?’ He broke the seal and took out the letter.
She showed no inclination to leave. He read the copperplate with dismay, until his anxiety became evident to her.
‘It is ill news, I take it?’
He nodded. ‘It is very late news, madam. A letter from the agent of the Company — my facilitation — who died before I was able to meet with him.’
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